I have an iPhone application which needs to generate a local HTML file from a template and then render the HTML in a UIWebView. It basically needs simple Django-like template features, just to replace template tags with values and simple enumeration over collections (for instance to generate rows of a table). Is there some existing simple template framework available for iPhone apps (implemented in C or in Objective-C of course)? I looked at Dashcode but that does not fit my needs I dont think. I have an HTML file I just want to replace values in it and enumerate/loop over collections to do it. I cant use Javascript for this actually because HTML needs to be email-able.
Thanks.
Take a look at MGTemplateEngine
https://github.com/groue/GRMustache may help you.
I've written a simple tempalte class once. It had <%= foobar %> style tags in it. I would call [myTemplate setValue:#"I like SO" forVar:#"foobar"] which would find the tag and replace it.
Looping and enumeration might be much harder. Maybe there is a ObjC templating library out there that I don't know of.
Related
Up to now, I used to use template auto-parser. I like the fact I can modify any element of the template using typoscript, without altering the initial HTML file. I also like the fact that I can render the html template directly in a web browser, filling it with dummy elements to see examples of menus and content elements. Finally, with the new backend templates, i now can place content elements anywhere on a grid, in a way that mimics the real aspect of the website.
I know there is also TemplaVoila. I never took the time to learn it. My feeling is that it is less compatible with some extensions, but maybe I am wrong.
Now, there is fluid, that will be used in the next version of Typo3. While it is clear that it is better using it that using template markers, I don't really understand why I should be better using Fluid than using template auto-parser or TemplaVoila. What I dislike is the fact it requires to modify the html template with special tags, meaning that either the web designer has to know Fluid, or the Typo3 integrator has to modify templates from the designer each time a modification is performed.
My question is: should I migrate form template auto-parser to Fluid for my website template? What are the benefits of using Fluid? Why should it be better? What template system should I use with Typo3?
As long as TypoScript does not support objects, the benefits of FLUIDTEMPLATE over template auto-parser are only a few. So there is no need to migrate.
But IMHO there are some arguments to switch to fluid:
more and more extensions will use fluid, so it will help you to learn fluid
you can use an ide with code-completion for fluid (it is just XML!)
fluid is really powerfull, you can have f.e. if statements which checks for empty content
some day TypoScript will support objects as well
But for extension developement, it is totally different. In an Extension, i would allways prefere using FLUID. You do not have to deal with template things inside your extension anymore. Just pass the data to fluid and things which concern the view will be done in your template.
Whever you choose, it should be something based on Fluid - this will allow you to be extremely versatile and it makes the implementation less important than the template, which is quite good.
I myself am the creator of the "Fluid Powered TYPO3" framework (formerly known as FED) and would of course recommend that you take a look at what this framework can do for you - it's capable of great things, not the least of which is saving you a lot of time while at the same time allowing you to create even more consistent templating for pages and content - and even backend modules.
And we're always happy to help new users. We are currently in the process of improving our documentation, but you can already find many fully up-to-date guides on our Github page - https://github.com/FluidTYPO3 - the repository called "documentation" is the place we will store all the documentation.
You may want to have a look at http://fedext.net http://fluidtypo3.org - especially the "Tour of features" which tries to explain the point of Fluid Powered TYPO3 in as few words as possible. After that, the examples from the documentation will give you a much clearer picture of what Fluid Powered TYPO3 can do for you.
We focus on efficiency always - we've tried to do all the heavy lifting so that you really can just sit down and begin creating page templates. We took a lot of inspiration from TemplaVoila but there is no more re-mapping of content and things like this: when you change your templates, that change is immediately reflected, which makes it very nice to work with in iterations and do things like continuous delivery and -integration.
Hopefully this helps!
Cheers,
Claus aka. NamelessCoder
You could also argue, that adding special tags like
<f:section name="typo-content">
<div id="content">This is where the designer intended content to go</<div>
</f:section>
Could assist your designer while doing a redesign to know where you "mapped" your content elements to. This is neither the case with autoparser nor with TemplaVoila. So if the designer moves stuff around you probably get your templates back and they still work without any modifications.
While trying to use XMLWorkerHelper.GetInstance().ParseXHTML() i find that it is really strict. Any wrong order of tags or unclosed tags will cause it to throw exception.
I am converting HTML that I have no control over.
Are there any flags to make it less strict? An input callback interface to handle funny markup? Anything in the itextsharp.tools.xml.html? Or an entirely new library compatible with itextsharp.text.IElement?
The name of the class and that method pretty much sums it up - you can't. The entire pipeline is based on the assumption that a valid XML document will be passed in, everything else will throw an exception. You can customize the pipeline and add your own handlers for things like link resolution, custom CSS properties and new HTML tags, but the core document processor still needs valid HTML.
I would recommend looking into running your HTML through a library that can convert it to XHTML.
EDIT
Also check out wkhtmltopdf. It uses webkit to render HTML and does (apparently) a pretty good job.
How to use wkhtmltopdf.exe in ASP.net
wkhtmltopdf.exe System.Security.SecurityException on cloud web server. How can i override server security policy
C# html to pdf converter using wkhtmltopdf or any other free tools
Is it possible in Zend Framework to contextually autoload a stylesheet based on a unique identifier?
I'd like to load css based on the layout and the action name by first checking if the stylesheet exists then loading it.
Is that possible?
Yes it is possible and surprisingly simple to implement. I have just started trying this for myself in a small project I am working on.
See Andy Baird's blog on this, which also includes the code you need to get you started. He continues it in a second blog which takes the concept slightly further.
He uses the same technique for both CSS and javascript files, so you may want to try it with both too.
Are there any good thing, best practice or profit we have after using the HTML helper in an ASP.NET MVC project?
When I am trying to use them I found that I lose the speed I have with HTML and many difficulties I have whenever I use an HTML helper.
Other [non-techie] persons can't understand what I write using Helper if I want to show them or they want to do something they need to spent more time on, even if they have working knowledge of HTML.
If I use an HTML helper I lose the speed. When I use HTML I just type and of course I am not aware of it. But using helper, it is hard to understand.
What thing do we get when I use HTML helper? I think it is nothing I get because I lose the speeed. Others can't understand what I do using helper and can't customize the code if they want.
Why do we use HTML helpers?
You use HTML helpers to encapsulate some small HTML fragments which are repeated all over your pages. And to avoid writing those HTML snippets all over again you use helpers.
They are very useful, especially when dealing with things like URLs because instead of hardcoding your links helpers take advantage of routing the definition on your server and by simply changing those routes the whole site URLs' change without ever touching any single HTML page.
Another scenario where HTML helpers are useful is for generating form input fields. In this case they automatically could handle values when posting back and show associated validation messages. Can you imagine the spaghetti code you would have to write in your views if there weren't HTML helpers?
The biggest advantage I find is with the editor and display templates.
If your editor for a field is more than just a simple input box, you can put that into a template and replace the several tags with a call to
<%:Html.EditorFor(m=>m.Property)%>
This means that your page is a lot easier to edit as you aren't wading through a lot of fluff HTML to find what you want.
Hello fellow coders & codetts
I was wondering, if I needed to create a rich text formatted document using html and css, which will be used inside a UIWebView, could I then insert cocoa calls inside HTML tags? I do this in ruby, and many other langs do this as well, but I do not know if possible on the iphone.
My main goal is to display a report that will pull data from coreData entities, format it to look pretty, and then create a PDF for the user to email or print.
The only reason I am using HTML is that is what someone here # StackOverflow mentioned that was the best practice for the iphone. But I would really like to be able to just create a PDF without the HTML and UIWebVIew, so If you know how this can be done, by all means do tell, the world wants to know.
thank u for your precious time
No, you can't (easily) access your Cocoa objects and classes from HTML/JavaScript. You can, however use Cocoa to call JavaScript methods on the loaded webpage. You can use these JavaScript methods to pass data from Cocoa to the web page, and in those JavaScript methods, you can then change the content of the webpage. That would look something like this:
[webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"doSomethingWithString('%#');", stringToPass]];
And on the JavaScript side:
function doSomethingWithString(passedString) {
// show stuff in webpage
}