May I defend my points?
CSS templating:
It think dynamically generated CSS files are acceptable and they work
wonderfully.
They allow to change border colors background colors, background images on the
fly.
Example:
input {
border-color: $objectStyle.borderColor;
border-width: 1px;
border-style: solid;
}
body{
background-image: url($context/content?id=1&file=101&cat=0);
background-repeat: repeat;
}
XML files and RSS files:
RSS and list like XML files can be generated with templating too.
Very complex XML files require a library.
Sitemap Index and Sitemap files are same as XML
Example sitemap template:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9";>
#foreach ($pData in $pageData)
<sitemap>
<loc>$pData.location</loc>
<lastmod>$pData.lastModified</lastmod>
</sitemap>
#end
</sitemapindex>
Here are the living sitemap examples.
(The sitemap xml is requested as html so the browser will display it as html.
Please open the source in the browser to be able to see the xml.)
http://217.114.115.252/sitemap.htm?cat=346
http://217.114.115.252/sitemap.htm?cat=883
http://217.114.115.252/sitemap-index.htm
Json data file can be generated with the xstream library.
If the Json data set is not huge the entire content can be collected into a
single string.
Javascript templating.
Sometimes javascript components need several configuration parameters.
These configuration parameters could be supplied by objects placed in the
context.
For example a flash object can be implemented as a custom control.
Instances of this the flash controls can be placed in the middle of pages for
example.
It is also possible to create a flash-panel that use html template.
Instances of the panel can be added to a page.
Both solution would work. Selection is the question of preference. (I prefer
custom control for flash.)
In general any kind of textual content (except json) can be served by
templating mechanism.
It may not be efficient to create custom control for everything.
Kind Regards.
Jozsef Gabor
