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**Blama** · 25 Aug 2014, 14:19

Hello all,

the configuration file that produced the output shown in the 1st post is directly from the velocity-1.7.jar-file.
See velocity-1.7.jar:org/apache/velocity/runtime/defaults/velocity.properties. You can change it (unpack-change-zip-rename-cycle), but there has to be a better way.

@Isomorphic: Any hints?
Also, this would not solve the integration of velocity-tools.

Best regards,
Blama

**Isomorphic** · 25 Aug 2014, 20:12

At the moment, we do not provide a mechanism for altering the default configuration of the VelocityEngine. We will likely add this as a feature in a future release.

However, what you can do is alter the default velocity configuration to include your custom properties. As described in this section of the Velocity docs https://click.apache.org/docs/veloci...eys_and_Values, the default config file is wrapped in the Velocity jar and lives in org/apache/velocity/runtime/defaults/velocity.defaults.

So what you need to do is unjar the velocity jar, modify this file to include the config you need (which will have to be in .properties format instead of xml, but this is well documented here: http://velocity.apache.org/tools/rel...roperties.html - they show a sophisticated config in both XML and .properties format). Then you will need to re-jar and use this modified jar for your app.

I realize this is sub-optimal, but it will at least solve the problem in the short term. Longer term, we will likely provide a cleaner mechanism for this sort of thing.

Hope this helps!

**Blama** · 26 Aug 2014, 08:56

Hi Isomorphic,

thanks for the hint to the jar'd velocity.properties file. It is not optimal, but considering this is a one-time configuration, it doesn't matter.

I've been trying the whole day to get the Velocity Tools / Escape Tool to work - it just did not work out. Before I start debugging into the Velocity startup, could you show with a simple example how you use Velocity Tools?

I'd need the entry for velocity.properties, most likely something easy like

Code:

...old file contents...
tools.toolbox = application
tools.data.version = 2.0
tools.data.version.type = number
tools.application.date = org.apache.velocity.tools.generic.DateTool
tools.application.esc = org.apache.velocity.tools.generic.EscapeTool

an a hint on how to use it. Most likely $esc.html($NOTNULLFIELDNAME).
Additionally I'd need the names of the JARs you dropped in the webapp (velocity-1.7.jar was already there, additionally velocity-tools-generic-2.0.jar or velocity-tools-2.0.jar) and (perhaps) some more apache-commons-jars (see linked tools dependencies above).

It shouldn't be too difficult, but it just doesn't work. So any How-To (velocity.properties, template usage, deployed files) is greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately Velocity isn't printing out much more than the initial startup log entries for me and it is not easy to google help on this topic as the primary usage of Velocity seems to be in a servlet / xml-configuration context, that does not apply to SmartGWT, so I had no success that way.

Thank you & Best regards,
Blama

**Isomorphic** · 26 Aug 2014, 11:23

It turns out that there's no way to make Velocity Tools available in a VelocityContext by making configuration changes to the VelocityEngine class. Instead, we would need to use a ToolManager http://velocity.apache.org/tools/rel...ml#ToolManager to create a custom VelocityContext and then use that VelocityContext to parse the template. This ToolManager is what would consume the configuration that we were both looking at (http://velocity.apache.org/tools/rel...roperties.html).

I think that it would be helpful to enable side-loading of arbitrary tools into the VelocityContext that SC/SGWT creates and we will add this support in a future release.

For your immediate needs, you should be able to make the Escape tool available as an attribute on the request and then access it via the $requestAttributes handle as described here: http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwte...tySupport.html

To do this globally, you will need to implement a trivial subclass of IDACall http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwte...t/IDACall.html. Simply provide a custom implementation of the processRequest method in your subclass that does the following:

Code:

request.setAttribute("esc", new org.apache.velocity.tools.generic.EscapeTool());
super.processRequest(request, response)

Then, modify your web.xml to map the IDACall to your subclass. Then, you should be able to access this escape tool in all your velocity templates as:

Code:

$requestAttributes.esc.escapeHTML(foo)

**Blama** · 26 Aug 2014, 12:39

Hi Isomorphic,

thank you very much for your fast answer and for the findings included.

With your help I could solve the problem. I added this code to my SQLDataSource-subcalls (as I need the EscapeTool in every (fetch-)request, not only every client-request):

Code:

@Override
public DSResponse executeFetch(DSRequest request) throws Exception {
	[B]request.addToTemplateContext("esc", new EscapeTool());[/B]
	...my old code...
	return super.executeFetch(request);
}

With this, I can escape my mailtext-tokens in my <mail>-tag in my fetch-Operationbinding:

Code:

<tr>
	<td width="160" bgcolor="#666666"><b>Comment:</b></td>
	<td width="500" bgcolor="#DDDDDD">[B]$esc.html($STATUS_STATUSCOMMENT)[/B]</td>
</tr>

I hope this helps everyone else finding this thread as well. I added only velocity-tools-generic-2.0.jar and no other (additional) apache-commons libs.

If it becomes possible to configure Velocity more in the future, this is great; but from my current point of view everything is working now.

Best regards,
Blama

**Isomorphic** · 26 Aug 2014, 16:35

That's even better - nicely done.

We will still support the standard tools.xml way of configuring additional velocity tool extensions because most people will just expect that to work.

Announcement

Howto needed: Velocity 2.0 Tools with SmartGWT 4.1

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