Creating text templates
Advantages of using text templates:
- Can produce HTML or PDF files.
- Small size of the produced document.
- Easily maintain the templates over time.
- Less time required to create the document.
Preliminaries
Register the Metadata group definition at Administration > Metadata.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE property-groups PUBLIC "-//OpenKM//DTD Property Groups 3.10//EN"
"http://www.openkm.com/dtd/property-groups-3.10.dtd">
<property-groups>
<property-group label="Sample Template" name="okg:tpl">
<input label="Name" name="okp:tpl.name"/>
<input label="Birth Date" name="okp:tpl.birth_date" type="date" />
<select label="Language" name="okp:tpl.language" type="simple">
<option label="Java" value="java"/>
<option label="Python" value="python"/>
<option label="PHP" value="php" />
</select>
</property-group>
</property-groups>In order to establish a relation between the template form field and the property group, you have to name them following a naming convention: replace ":" and "." with "_". Here you can see the matching between the two fields:
| Metadata field name | Template field name | Template field value |
|---|---|---|
|
okp:tpl.name |
okp_tpl_name |
${okp_tpl_name!} |
|
okp:tpl.birth_date |
okp_tpl_birth_date |
${okp_tpl_birth_date!} |
|
okp:tpl.language |
okp_tpl_language |
${okp_tpl_language!} |
Creating the template
For this kind of template, we will create an HTML template. This is the template source code:
<html>
<body>
<h1>Sample template</h1>
<table>
<tr>
<td><b>Name</b></td>
<td>${okp_tpl_name!}</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>Birth Date</b></td>
<td>${okp_tpl_birth_date?string("yyyy-MM-dd")!}</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>Language</b></td>
<td>${okp_tpl_language!}</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>The tags ${okp_tpl_name!}, ${okp_tpl_birth_date!} and ${okp_tpl_language!} will be replaced by user input values. An error will occur and abort the template processing if you try to access a missing variable, but the ! operator handles this situation. In addition, you can provide a default value if one is missing using this expression:
${missing_value!"The default one"}The result is an HTML file with the client input requested by OpenKM.
Date format
OpenKM uses FreeMarker internally, so you can take advantage of FreeMarker's formatting flexibility. For example, you can set the date format this way:
${okp_tpl_birth_date?string("yyyy-MM-dd")!}Learn more about FreeMarker formatting at Built-in Reference.
