Groovy Templates

iKnowBase supports the use of Groovy templates. When using Groovy templates, you will use the power of groovy to create the desired output, or perform the required actions.

combine static markup, standard FreeMarker functionality and iKnowBase model objects to create the desired output:

• Static markup is the static text that you want output from the template. This is typically HTML, but can really be any kind of text that you want, for example to generate XML, RSS or JSON.
• iKnowBase model objects are the data that iKnowBase makes available to you.
• Standard FreeMarker functionality are directives and expressions that allow you to iterate over, print and otherwise manipulate the model objects.

In order to best utilize the FreeMarker technology, you should read the FreeMarker documentation available at http://freemarker.org/docs. Some key features are described below, but this covers only a small subset of the capabilities.

About Groovy

Groovy is a full-featured programming language for the Java Virtual Machine. More information about groovy is available at the following sources:

• http://groovy.codehaus.org/
• http://groovy.codehaus.org/Documentation
• JavaDoc for Groovy internal classes written in Java
• GroovyDoc for Groovy internal classes written in Groovy

Where can you use Groovy

Groovy is available in many places in iKnowBase.

• Anywhere there is a presentation template, you can choose between Groovy and FreeMarker. They have access to the same underlying data, but with different syntaxes and capabilities.
• As an action (similar to servlets), connected directly to a Target (URL).

Implicit objects

When using Groovy, iKnowBase will always provide you with a number of “implicit objects” available to the script. These are documented in the API Reference, under each component type, and are the same objects that are being made available to FreeMarker templates. However, Groovy templates have access to a number of additional objects.

For templates that run in any sort of viewer or page, the following objects are available:

When running in a web settings, where there is in fact an underlying HTTP servlet, the following objects are also available:

For templates that run as a Script Target, the following additional objects are also available:

Examples

This chapter contains a couple of very small examples, indicating how you can use Groovy along with iKnowBase.

This example shows a couple of items. First, how you can use the iknowbase-object to get a Groovy SQL object, and then use that to query the database. Second, it shows how the implicit MarkupBuilder named html can be used to produce well-formatted html output.

 // Prepare some data
def pageTitle = "/SYSTEST/Action/GroovyScript-HtmlBuilder"
def users = iknowbase.sql.rows("select * from all_users where rownum <= 5")

// Output a complete html-document
html.html {
   head {
      title(pageTitle)
      style(type:"text/css","""
      table { border:thin solid black; width:100%; }
      th { background-color: #999 }
      """)
   }
   body {
      h1(pageTitle)
      table {
         tr {
            th("User ID")
            th("Username")
         }
         users.each { user->
            tr {
               td(user.user_id)
               td(user.username.toLowerCase())
            }
         }
      }
   }
}

This example shows how the implict StreamingJsonBuilder named json can automate the production of json:

def dbUsers = iknowbase.sql.rows("select * from all_users where rownum <= 5")

// Output a complete json-document
def userlist = [users:dbUsers.collect { [id:it.user_id, username:it.username.toLowerCase() ] }]
def userinfo = [userinfo:userlist]

json(userinfo)

This example shows how to use the documentService to create a document from an activitiy Script task.

import com.iknowbase.api.contentservices.v2.model.*;
def userref = new UserReference().withUsername(initiator)

def document = new Document()
document.documentIdentity = new DocumentReference(null, null, "activiti_" + execution.getProcessInstanceId(), null, null)
document.title = "Activiti Process - ProcessInstanceId: " + execution.getProcessInstanceId()
document.documentTypeReference = new ObjectReference(null, null, "TEMPDATA", null);

// Create ikb document
def documentReference = iknowbase.documentService.saveDocument (
   userref,
   document,
   SaveOperationEnumeration.INSERT,
   SaveOperationEnumeration.NONE,
   SaveOperationEnumeration.NONE,
   null, null, null, false
);