Re: In significant need of help.

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

"gotten us as close to MVC as possible"

Probably the "us" is the important qualifier here Joe.  I have seen 
plenty of jsp and other code over the past couple of years and every 
implementation is different.  Some are more MVC, some are less.  That 
probably reflects the skills and previous programming orientation of the 
programmer.

Me, I am a "seat of the pants" programmer who basically grew up on RPG 
(and probably more VB and .asp than I care to admit to...) But, what I 
REALLY liked about the first interactive RPG program I wrote was that 
there was this "magic" built into the structure.  If I had a file with 
three fields, FLDA and FLDB and FLDC and I wanted to read and write that 
to a screen all I needed to do in SDA was to have a screen format that 
had the same field names and characteristics and, viola! Done! I  read 
the file format, write the screen format, then read the screen format 
and write to the file. (I THINK that is the correct sequence).  All the 
data movement intricacies were taken care of (yeah, lots of editing 
needed to be done, but I learned some of that the hard way...)

In any case, when I decided to move to HTML I looked for something that 
worked the same way.  I wanted to retrieve the screen format (HTML), 
retrieve the data and write the whole thing out and FreeMarker was the 
first thing I tripped across that did that.  I didn't have to worry 
about much on the client side, HTML or otherwise.  No taglib references, 
no other components to worry about. The server does the heavy lifting 
and sends out the HTML. You're right, Freemarker isn't smart about HTML 
at all, it just slavishly reads the HTML template, replaces the field 
"markers" with data and outputs it.  At that point the output is sent it 
to the HTTP server.  You could just as easily output to a report in PDF 
if you wanted to.  It is just a templating tool.

I really liked the simplicity though: Just an HTML template to mark up 
(like my SDA example).  Just expose the data to the HTML form. Output 
the result.

OK.  That is a simple explanation.  I know that JSP's do something 
similar and, when properly implemented, can actually be maintained over 
time.  With FM I can have a web designer design the page without any 
knowledge of how it will be used by the server.  I can replace the text 
fields with my field markers that refer to the servlet data and it is 
ready for Freemarker.  Again, that is greatly simplified but it matches 
the model I am familiar with.

If I have learned anything over the years, regardless of the "right 
solution", one programmer's delight is another one's nemesis.  Variety 
is the spice of life.

Pete



Joe Pluta wrote:

> I find this statement interesting, Pete.  Why do you consider FreeMarker
> more MVC than JSP?  With a properly written JSP, all the model
> information is passed via beans, and the JSP simply displays them.  Why
> is this less MVC than FreeMarker?  FreeMarker is just a text generator,
> sort of like XSLT, and as such isn't very smart about things like HTML.
> You have to actually embed your HTML code in the FreeMarker template,
> which makes it roughly equivalent to a JSP (except interpreted).
>
> Joe
>
>  
>
> > From: Pete Helgren
> >
> > JSP's kind of
> > muddy the waters between client side and server side so perhaps there
> >    
> is
>  
>
> > a way with JSP's to do this.
> >
> > I am by no means an experienced .jsp programmer.  We moved to
> >    
> FreeMarker
>  
>
> > so we could avoid JSP's.  Freemarker, being a server side engine has
> > gotten us a close to MVC as possible....but I am digressing here.
> >    
>
>