Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Add template engine ADR #11900

Merged
merged 13 commits into from
Oct 23, 2024
76 changes: 76 additions & 0 deletions docs/decisions/0039-template-engine.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
---
nav_order: 39
parent: Decision Records
---

# Template engine

## Context and Problem Statement

We need to choose a template engine for [custom export filters](https://docs.jabref.org/collaborative-work/export/customexports) and [AI features](https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/pull/11884).

A discussion of template engines was also in [one of the JabRef repos](https://github.com/koppor/jabref/issues/392).

A discussion was raised on StackOverflow ["Velocity vs. FreeMarker vs. Thymeleaf"](https://stackoverflow.com/q/1459426/10037342).

## Decision Drivers

* Text output has to be supported.
* It should be fast.

Check failure on line 19 in docs/decisions/0039-template-engine.md

View workflow job for this annotation

GitHub Actions / Markdown

Trailing spaces

docs/decisions/0039-template-engine.md:19:21 MD009/no-trailing-spaces Trailing spaces [Expected: 0 or 2; Actual: 1] https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint/blob/v0.35.0/doc/md009.md
* It should be possible to provide templates out of Strings (required by the AI feature)

## Considered Options

* Apache Velocity
* Apache FreeMarker
* Thymeleaf

## Decision Outcome

Chosen option: "{title of option 1}", because
{justification. e.g., only option, which meets k.o. criterion decision driver | which resolves force {force} | … | comes out best (see below)}.

## Pros and Cons of the Options

### Apache Velocity

- Main page: <https://velocity.apache.org/>.
- User guide: <https://velocity.apache.org/engine/devel/user-guide.html>.
- Developer guide: <https://velocity.apache.org/engine/devel/developer-guide.html>.

* Good, because supports plain text templating.
* Good, because it is possible to use `String` as a template.
* Good, because it has simple syntax.
* Bad, because {argument d}
* Bad, because it is in maintenance mode.

### Apache FreeMarker

- Main page: <https://freemarker.apache.org/index.html>.
- User guide: <https://freemarker.apache.org/docs/dgui.html>.
- Developer guide: <https://freemarker.apache.org/docs/pgui_quickstart.html>.

* Good, because supports plain text templating.
* Good, because it is possible to use `String` as a template.
* Good, because in active development.
* Good, because it is powerful and flexible.
* Neutral, because {argument c}
* Bad, because {argument d}

### Thymeleaf

- Main page: <https://www.thymeleaf.org/>.
- Documentation: <https://www.thymeleaf.org/doc/tutorials/3.1/usingthymeleaf.html>.

* Good, because supports plain text templating.
* Good, because it is possible to use `String` as a template.
* Good, because it has [several template modes](https://www.thymeleaf.org/doc/tutorials/3.1/usingthymeleaf.html#what-kind-of-templates-can-thymeleaf-process), that helps to make HTML, XML, and other templates.
* Good, because it is powerful and flexible.
* Neutral, because the API is a bit more complex than the other options.
* Bad, because {argument d}

## More Information

As stated in [the template discussion issue](https://github.com/koppor/jabref/issues/392), we should choose a template engine, and then slowly migrate previous code and templates to the chosen engine.

<!-- markdownlint-disable-file MD004 -->
Loading