Document templates with fill-in fields
Document templates provide for creation of textual documents, such as HTML pages, from template source by inserting data from python objects and name-spaces.
When a document template is created, a collection of default values to be inserted may be specified with a mapping object and with keyword arguments.
A document templated may be called to create a document with values inserted. When called, an instance, a mapping object, and keyword arguments may be specified to provide values to be inserted. If an instance is provided, the document template will try to look up values in the instance using getattr, so inheritence of values is supported. If an inserted value is a function, method, or class, then an attempt will be made to call the object to obtain values. This allows instance methods to be included in documents.
Document templates masquerade as functions, so the python object publisher (Bobo) will call templates that are stored as instances of published objects. Bobo will pass the object the template was found in and the HTTP request object.
[
and ]
to
indicate block boundaries. In addition, parameters may be
used within formats to control how insertion is done.%%(date fmt=DayOfWeek upper)s
causes the contents of variable date
to be inserted using
custom format DayOfWeek
and with all lower case letters
converted to upper case.
is used to insert the variable total
with the C format
12.2f
.
Document templates extend python string substitition rules with a mechanism that allows conditional insertion of template text and that allows sequences to be inserted with element-wise insertion of template text.