is Velocity best choice for outputting XML with a template XML file?

[Stephen Huey]

http://www.roseindia.net/apachevelocity/xml.shtml

That example above shows how to use Velocity to take in a template XML file and merge your data into it to output a populated XML file. If I want to output an XML file with dynamic data by using some kind of template tags in an XML file, is Velocity the best choice out there?

Basically, if I have a template file with stuff like

<person>
     <name>$person.name</name>
</person>

in it, do you recommend Velocity for populating it?

[Ulf Dittmer]

If the format of the files is fixed in this way, sure, why not. Just make sure that Velocity (and/or your code) handles setting the encoding correctly. As an alternative, you could check out FreeMarker, which is the other widely used templating tool.

[Stephen Huey]

Thanks for the tip! I'm actually planning to do this on Google App Engine, and it looks like it wasn't working for someone on GAE in December due to a dependency on javax.swing:

http://solveme.wordpress.com/2009/12/25/freemarker-sucks-it-has-dependency-on-javax-swing/

I'll try Velocity for now.

[David Newton]

I've used a variety of templating engines for outputting XML; they work fine.

If your needs are simple it can often be just as easy to throw stuff into the classes being output, or into a wrapper/facade.

XStream is pretty easy to use, but don't know about GAE compatibility.