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Overview

News

15 June 2004: FreeMarker 2.3 is out!

2.2 to 2.3: FreeMarker 2.3 introduces numerous little new features and quality improvements compared to the 2.2.x series. The most notable improvements are the ability to define functions (methods) in templates, the ability to interpolate variables in string literals, the support for a variable number of macro parameters, and the more intelligent default object wrapper. Also, FreeMarker 2.3 offers powerful new features for processing and transforming XML documents. With this FreeMarker targets a new application domain, which is similar to the application domain of XSLT: transforming complex XML to whatever textual output. (See the full list of changes here...)

15 June 2004: FreeMarker 2.2.8 is out!

This is a maintenance release of the 2.2 series. (For new projects use the 2.3 series, which is not fully backward compatible with the 2.2 series.) See the changes here...

What is FreeMarker?

FreeMarker is a "template engine"; a generic tool to generate text output (anything from HTML or RTF to autogenerated source code) based on templates. It is 100% written in Java.

FreeMarker is designed to be practical for the generation of HTML Web pages, particularly by servlet-based applications following the MVC (Model View Controller) pattern. The idea behind using the MVC pattern for dynamic Web pages is that you separate the designers (HTML authors) from the programmers. Everybody works on what they are good at. Designers can change the appearance of a page without programmers having to change or recompile code, because the application logic (Java programs) and page design (FreeMarker templates) are separated. Templates do not become polluted with complex program fragments.

Although FreeMarker has some programming capabilities, it is not a full-blown programming language like PHP. Instead, Java programs prepare the data to be displayed, and FreeMarker just generates textual pages that display the prepared data using templates.

Overview of FreeMarker workflow

FreeMarker is not a Web application framework. It is suitable for a component in a Web application framework, but the FreeMarker engine itself knows nothing about HTTP or servlets. It simply generates text. As such, it is perfectly usable in non-web application environments as well. Note, however, that we provide out-of-the-box solutions for using FreeMarker as the view component of Model 2 frameworks (e.g. Struts), which also let you use JSP taglibs in the templates.

OSI Certified FreeMarker is Free, with BSD-style license. It is OSI Certified Open Source Software. OSI Certified is a certification mark of the Open Source Initiative.

Read more feature highlights.

 

 

 
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