Using Additional Velocity Tools

Abstract

In the previous chapter, you saw how to use Anakia to manipulate XML input files to create textual output. Anakia is perhaps the most developed of the Velocity tools, but it isn’t the only one available. In this chapter, I’ll demonstrate three additional tools that you can put to a wide variety of uses. First, I’ll discuss the Veltag project, which enables you to embed Velocity content directly in JSP pages. Second, I’ll demonstrate Texen, a text-generation tool for Ant in a similar vein to Anakia. Texen powers the source code-generation capabilities of the Torque utility in the Jakarta Turbine project. The third and final tool covered in this chapter is Declarative Velocity Style Language (DVSL)—a Velocity-based alternative to XSL. DVSL offers a more feature-rich alternative to XSL than Anakia, but it isn’t currently reliable.