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SiTE - Simple Template Engine

Author: Peter Conrad, conrad@tivano.de, Frederik Dahlke, dahlke@tivano.de
$Id: introduction.html,v 1.12 2002/05/10 10:12:01 conrad Exp $

SiTE is an easy to integrate, fast, lightweight template engine with an open, extendable architecture which cleanly separates presentation from application code.

SiTE parses any text based template - including XML, WML and HTML - and creates a lightweight, structured document representation that enables an application to change the template's contents at runtime without regard to its format.


Benefit summary

  • Any text based template format is supported, for instance you can write application code that supports WML, HTML and XHTML simultaneously.
  • Complete separation of presentation and application code enables programmers to build template processing libraries easily.
  • Page designers can continue to use their favourite HTML authoring tool.
  • HTML templates can be displayed in any contemporary browser.
  • Template and application maintenance is easy.
  • Internationalization is easy and adaptive, maintenance costs are reduced.
  • No recompiles, this saves valuable developer time.
  • Complete separation of presentation and application code enables page designers and programmers to work in parallel.
  • Template representation uses only a configurable amount of JVM heap space.
  • Open architecture gives you the freedom to extend SiTE for your needs.
  • Available source code.
  • Good software performance lowers your hardware costs.
  • Runs with JDK 1.2 and above.
  • 100% Java


Introduction

By separating the presentation from application code SiTE enables page (presentation) designers to work in parallel with application programmers. The integration time is reduced to an absolute minimum. Additionally, page designers can continue to use their favourite HTML authoring tool, like Macromedia's Dreamweaver. Furthermore it becomes very easy to build template processing libraries, like handlers for automatic form refilling, url rewriting, list construction etc..

On the other hand, SiTE is a tool which can easly be used and integrated into any Java application. It does not require any additional libaries or even special classloaders. Internationalization is easy: by separating the Java application code from the layout language (typically HTML), Java code duplication is avoided and maintenance costs are reduced. Furthermore, SiTE gives you the ability to adapt the page design for each country, respecting cultural differences and needs, without changing any Java application code.

Compared to JSP or XMLC SiTE templates do not need to be compiled, which has two advantages:

  • First, the re-parsing (recompilation for JSP or XMLC) process is a lot faster. Imagine a large web application project. Now imagine how much valuable time is wasted during the whole development process by developers waiting for JSP pages to recompile.
  • Second, SiTE templates can be swapped out to a (RAM)disk outside the JVM. This saves a lot of JVM heap space and makes garbage collection a lot faster. Plus you can control how much heap space should be consumed by your templates.

SiTE provides a simple template cache and auto update functionality. SiTE/HTML templates can be displayed in any contemporary webbrowser. SiTE gives you the freedom to configure the template syntax or even implement your own template parser, template cache or template repository.


SiTE Demo

The SiTE demo is a game you can not win - it's only a demo. It is possible to play the game via your browser or WAP mobile phone. The HTML and WML version are handled by exactly the same servlet code. The servlet only uses different presentation templates. It was not neccessary to change a single line of java code in order to develop a WML version.

HTML version: http://www.tivano.net/SiTE/ULose

WML version: http://www.tivano.net/SiTE/ULoseWAP



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www.tivano.de

Enhydra XMLC is a registered trademark of Lutris Technologies, Inc. Java, JDK and JSP are registered trademark of SUN Microsystems, Inc. All other products and services are trademarks of their respective owners.