Is it possible to call a method from a DotLiquid template? - dotliquid

Question

Clearly, you can call properties, but calling a method doesn't do anything, even on a class that extends from Drop.
I'm trying to do something like this in my XmlDocumentDrop class.
public string XPath
{
return xmlDoc.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode(xpath).InnerText;
}
Then in my DotLiquid template.
{{ xmlDoc.XPath("//firstName") }}
This returns nothing.
I have tried to use the "CatchAll" method, but I'm trying to pass XPath, and it seems to strip out all non-word characters. So, trying to do this:
{{ xmlDoc.//firstName }}
Just sends "firstName" to BeforeMethod.
I'm trying to template an XML document, using XPath to access data from the template. Short of creating properties for every XPath I might need (not ideal, as the idea is to let users template an XML doc without having to involve a developer), what are my options?
I could do a filter, so something like this:
{{ xmlDoc|xpath:"//firstName" }}
But a filter only takes a string, which means I'm passing in the raw XML as a string, then re-parsing this XML every time it's called, which isn't great.
Options?
Edit:
I tried a custom tag too, but in the end, I'm still passing the XML as a string and re-parsing all the XML every time. What I really need is a reference to the XML document in my template, and the ability to call a single method, passing in a string of XPath.

Answer 1

You can pass XMLDoc as not a string. Simply create a Filter that accepts object like this:
public static Xpath(object document, string xpath)
{
var xmlDoc = document as XmlDocumentDrop;
return xmlDoc.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode(xpath).InnerText;
}
That way you don't need to re-parse anything.