Template – Page 8

FreshMarker and ⊻, ¬, ≠, ≤, ≥, ∨, ∧

2026-02-262024-10-12 by Jens

Sometimes a new feature also needs to be a bit of fun. When updating the FreshMarker Grammar, I noticed that the operators lt, gt, gte and lte were still present. These are variants of the usual <, >, <= and >= operators and are reminiscent of the opcodes of a long-forgotten era when assembler languages still roamed the steppes of programming. Since FreshMarker was given its Unicode capabilities by CongoCC, the question arose as to why not allow ≠ and other operator characters in the template.

FreshMarker und OWASP

2026-02-262024-09-30 by Jens

It will come as no surprise that FreshMarker, like all other template engines, must take precautions against template injection. Template injection is a security vulnerability that occurs when an application handles templates insecurely. Templates are prefabricated files or strings with placeholders that are replaced by data from users or other sources. Similar to FreeMarker, FreshMarker also has an escape mechanism that detects special characters in the interpolations using a harmless variant. If the standard mechanism is not enough, OWASP can help out.

FreshMarker Performance (2)

2026-02-262024-08-30 by Jens

In the first article on FreshMarker performance, some of the template engine’s speed problems were addressed. The benchmark showed a tripling of the speed for these adjustments. In this article, the use of Reflections will be removed, which is certainly also of interest outside of a template engine.

FreshMarker Performance (1)

2026-02-262024-08-28 by Jens

FreshMarker started as an academic project. The main aim was to show how a template engine can be created. At some point, however, the question arose as to how fast the template engine actually is. To be honest, it has been slow so far. But first things first.

FreshMarkers Roman Numbers

2026-02-262024-08-22 by Jens

FreshMarker is quite a small library, about 475 KB in size. Therefore there is always room to make a few small additions. One of these is the display of numbers and loop variables with Roman numerals.

Partial Template Reduction (3)

2026-02-262024-08-16 by Jens

At the end of the summer vacation, here is the last post on the topic of Partial Template Reduction for the time being. The basic algorithm was presented in the first two articles. In this article, the missing variable support is added.

Partial Template Reduktion (2)

2026-02-262024-08-08 by Jens

In the first article on the implementation of the Partial Template Reduction feature, a few basic functions were created. This part deals with the implementation for the If-, Switch- and List- Directives.

Null Equality in Templates

2026-02-262024-08-02 by Jens

This is an article that reports directly from the bowels of FreshMarker. It is therefore mainly worthwhile for readers who want to know a little more about how FreshMarker works.

FreshMarker Partial Template Reduction

2025-06-012024-07-27 by Jens

Some blog posts are about ideas and not solutions. This has the pleasant advantage for the author that the content of the contribution does not (yet) have to work. It also saves the developer work if the audience does not appreciate the topic. When working with templates, there are always a number of variables that are processed in a template with always the same value. It would be nice if you could save computing time there.

FreshMarker Sorted Hash Lists

2026-02-262024-07-22 by Jens

I really like it when I can add new features to FreshMarker, especially if they are easy to implement and integrate elegantly into the overall system.