Velocity Templates - New Line

Question

I\'ve been working with Apache\'s Velocity engine and a custom template.
The thing is, that I haven\'t been able to generate a String with the corresponding line breaks. I t

Answer 1

It might be easiest to simply use the Velocity EscapeTool.

See this link: https://velocity.apache.org/tools/releases/2.0/javadoc/org/apache/velocity/tools/generic/EscapeTool.html#getNewline%28%29

Example Usage: Line Break Here: $esc.newline This is on a new line.

Answer 2

I needed a new line for generating javascript. Well, I didn't need it of course, but it made reading the generated code easier while developing. In this case, I just set a variable so that the Velocity was easier to read. This is all you need:

Velocity Code:

#set( $newline="
")
#set( $jsCode = "var bling='blang';{$newline}var bark='bite';{$newline}" )
<script>
$jsCode</script>

Result:

<script>
var bling='blang';
var bark='bite';
</script>

Answer 3

In Velocity 1.4 neither newlines in strings works nor does the escapeTool.getNewline() exist. If you do not have the possibility to add anything to the context, here is a Velocity-only hack to generate arbitrary characters:

#macro(chr $charCode $str)
  #set($str="0")
  #set($chars=$str.charAt(0).toChars($charCode))
  #set($str="")
  #foreach($char in $chars)
    #set($str="$str$char")
  #end
#end

#chr(10 $nl)

First Line${nl}Second Line

It uses Character.toChars() to convert the ASCII code 0x0A = 10 to a char[] which it then assembles into a string. This way one could generate any character such as

#chr(129299 $nerd) ## U+1F913 => 0x1F913 = 129299
$nerd
## outputs                                                                     

                                                        
            

Answer 4

If you are using Velocity 1.5 or later, you can also just put the new line in there:

#set( $foo = "this has a 
line break" ) 

Answer 5

We had issues with newlines and ended up putting a property on the VelocityContext:

VelocityContext ctx = new VelocityContext();
ctx.put("newline", "\n");

Then, wherever we needed to use a newline, we would reference the context variable:

$newline

We use this in cases where we need to replace newlines in a string with <br />.

Answer 6

Are you using Velocity to generate HTML content? In that case remember that you need to use <br> not a newline.

If you actually want a new line character you just put the actual new line character, i.e. press enter. There is no escape sequences like \n in Velocity.