Introduction

A template is a document that can be applied on a data object to produce another document. Thus templates are used to present data or content in different styles and formats.

A typical template engine works in the following way:

The template engine accepts both data and the template, and a new document is generated and returned as per the template provided.

For example, an XML document can be used as data, and an XSLT document works as the template—this generates a new document that can be in HTML or Word format.

There are quite a few template engines available. XSLT is probably the most popularly used. Other engines are like FreeMarker templates, Velocity templates, and so on. Alfresco uses FreeMarker as the default template engine.

FreeMarker templates in Alfresco

Consider the following model:

At first, a content item is passed as the data before a FreeMarker template is created and then finally a formatted document is produced. If the document passed is with the name About Infoaxon...