Templates are easy to use :

Create a file that is your template, this file contains some html and some special tags

 
<!-- BEGIN example1 --> 
<div class="box"> 
This is an {EXAMPLE} 
</div> 
<!-- END example1 --> 

In the start method of your module create the template object

 
public void start() 
{ 
//.... 
Document doc = repository.loadTemplate("/template.html"); 
repository.addTemplate("example1", (Element) doc.selectSingleNode("/node/loopname='example1']/node")); 
Template example1 = repository.createTemplate("example1"); 
//.... 
} 

Template and module interact with a DelegateContext object

 
//.... 
DelegateContext ctx = new DelegateContext(); 
ctx.put("EXAMPLE", "example"); 
//.... 

Template renders with a writer and the context :

 
example1.render(ctx, page.getBodyWriter()); 

!You can nest <!-- BEGIN ... --> <!-- END ... --> tags 
<!-- BEGIN extern --> 
{EXTERN_VALUE} 
<!-- BEGIN switch_nested--> 
{switch_nested.NESTED_VALUE} 
<!-- END switch_nested --> 
<!-- END extern --> 

the contex must be initialised this way :

 
// .... 
DelegateContext extern = new DelegateContext(); 
extern.put("EXTERN_VALUE", "extern value"); 
DelegateContext nested = extern.next("switch_nested"); 
nested.put("NESTED_VALUE", "nested value"); 
// .... 

It is very usefull when you want to hide or display the nested content because the template system do not render "switch_nested" if you do not call next() on the extern context.

You can implement loops too:

 
<!-- BEGIN extern --> 
{EXTERN_VALUE} 
<!-- BEGIN switch_loop --> 
{switch_loop.LOOP_VALUE} 
<!-- END switch_loop --> 
<!-- END extern --> 

DelegateContext extern = new DelegateContext(); 
extern.put("EXTERN_VALUE", "extern value"); 
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) 
{ 
extern.next("switch_loop").put("LOOP_VALUE", new String(i)); 
}