Forum Discussion

james_scee's avatar
james_scee
Ace
12 years ago

How do you call FreeMarker macros on a page?

[Mod Note: This was originally posted as a comment to this TKB article: Creating FreeMarker macros for custom components and endpoints]   How do you call them on the page, as I'm trying as via ...
PaoloT's avatar
PaoloT
Lithium Alumni (Retired)
12 years ago

Hi James,

 

not sure if your syntax is correct. Have a look at the Freemarker Manual page  - they have an example:

 

#Example: Macro with parameters:

<#macro test foo bar baaz>
  Test text, and the params: ${foo}, ${bar}, ${baaz}
</#macro>
<#-- call the macro: -->
<@test foo="a" bar="b" baaz=5*5-2/>

 Hope that helps,

AdamN's avatar
AdamN
Khoros Oracle
12 years ago

I think Paolo is right. A macro cannot return a value. The "return" directive for a macro is just used for exiting the macro. If you need to return a value, you can use a function:

http://freemarker.org/docs/ref_directive_function.html

 

So you have a couple options...

 

If you want to use a macro, you can update your macro definition to just output the string instead of returning a value. For example:

<#macro m_singular num words> 
<#if (num == 1)> 
${words.singular}
</#if> 
${words.plural}
</#macro>

 Then to call the macro:

<@m_singular num=2 words={"singular":"post","plural":"posts"} />

 

If you'd prefer to change to a function instead, it would look something like this:

<#function m_singular num words> 
<#if (num == 1)> 
<#return words.singular> 
</#if> 
<#return words.plural>
</#function>

 And to call the function:

${m_singular(2,{"singular":"post","plural":"posts"})}

 

I hope this helps! If you're still having trouble getting this to work, let us know what error message(s) you're encountering.