How to use String as Velocity Template?

Question

What is the best way to create Velocity Template from a String?

I'm aware of Velocity.evaluate method where I can pass String or StringReader, but I'm curios is there a better way to do it (e.g. any advantage of creating an instance of Template).

Answer 1

There is some overhead parsing template. You might see some performance gain by pre-parsing the template if your template is large and you use it repeatedly. You can do something like this,

        RuntimeServices runtimeServices = RuntimeSingleton.getRuntimeServices();            
        StringReader reader = new StringReader(bufferForYourTemplate);
        SimpleNode node = runtimeServices.parse(reader, "Template name"));
        Template template = new Template();
        template.setRuntimeServices(runtimeServices);
        template.setData(node);
        template.initDocument();

Then you can call template.merge() over and over again without parsing it everytime.

BTW, you can pass String directly to Velocity.evaluate().