It is recommended to wait at least 3 days after asking a question on the users list before getting impatient.. I would say its 3 business days as some folks do other things on the weekend... In short..be patient.
I am an impatient man, no doubt about it. My first post to the user list was Jan. 15th, so I guess I met the 3 days (but not business days). I'm sure you are familiar with such frustration. When something like this actually wakes me up in the middle of the night, though, my impatience is only heightened.
Man, 3 business days means I'll have to wait until Tuesday!
Posted by
Lance
on January 18, 2003 at 06:32 PM CST
#
I would say the "3 day rule" will only work if the traffic of the user group mailing list is small.
Struts has so much traffic that if it doesn't get answered in 1 day - it's probably gone. At 150 messages a day, I doubt anyone goes through and reviews the old ones.
Posted by
Matt Raible
on January 18, 2003 at 06:44 PM CST
#
I'm sure that what you want to do is possible because I really don't care to spend the time looking into it for you (that is your job =)), but I do have to say that the solution might not be obvious to you at first. Especially if you are just becoming familiar with the tool. Saying something sucks right off the bat without trying or thinking about other ways to do things seems a bit immature to me.
One thing to realize about Velocity is that in many ways, it encourages doing things the right way (tm). Therefore, it sometimes requires people to think about things in ways that they might not have thought about them before, but results in a much better design.
I understand that you are expecting me to post some magical solution (scroll down to the velocimacro section to ways to configure the behavior of velocimacro's, which may have the solution you are looking for), but the reality is that in a web context, by itself Velocity sometimes needs extra help. This is because Velocity was designed to be more than just a webtool and is not tied to just one way of doing things. Think about it this way, if Struts is so great, how come I can't use the View portion (JSP) to do things other than just output HTML/XHTML? How come I can't use that "nice" tool to output SQL or Java or XXX outside of a web request?
Velocity is just so much more...give it a chance before you close your mind.
Jon, thanks for taking the time to comment. While saying something "sucks" may be immature, sadly it appears to be the most effective mechanism for getting attention (and as Andy has said, *that* sucks).
I've actually been following Velocity since it was announced, but this is my first attempt at implementing something. And it does work in a web context, and I fully believe it'll do what I want, but I cannot get enough information from it as to WHY it isn't working: I'd like to be able to configure it to give me stacktraces (reread the 3rd paragraph of this entry). I've read the documentation, several times, nearly committing them to memory before I even began the task at hand. I've searched, I've read the mailing list archives (so far as I could find anything remotely related), and tried any "solutions" that were presented. I don't expect you or anyone else to hand me the magical solution, but I would like better than RTFM, because that job has been done, over and over again. And I've experimented with the various configuration points, tried locating the file in every conceivable place!
The stickler seems to be that Velocity cannot find the vm file at startup time, though it can find them later. But if it cannot find them, why doesn't it say ResourceNotFoundException rather than NullPointerException? Maybe it has something to do with the servlet container's (Resin) classloader - most likely - but I cannot find any references to help troubleshoot such issues.
And I don't think this has anything to do with Velocity vs. Struts: Struts/JSP were intended for a narrow task. Velocity was designed with a much broader scope in mind, and thats cool!
Anyhoo, sorry I flew off the handle and was rude to everyone. I'd much rather solve this on my own, asking for help is very much a last resolve for me. That I stooped to such attention-getting tactics speaks of my desperation.
Posted by
Lance
on January 19, 2003 at 07:21 PM CST
#
Hi Lance, hopefully you emailed this to jon as well as I'm not sure he will remember to read the replies.. Next, I would suggest perhaps documenting this problem on the ApacheWiki (http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki). Then perhaps send the link to the velocity list. Perhaps they can modify portions online, or just a more convienient display. While thats not really what I intended the wiki for, its one more outlet...
Yep, I emailed Jon directly the same as the comment. But Jon's comment did jog my brain in another direction, and I plan on investigating VelocityViewServlet (whatever it's called) and see if there are some lessons there that I can apply. I will post a solution if/when I find one.
Posted by
Lance
on January 20, 2003 at 09:05 AM CST
#
Try Coldfusion Mx its way more functional for doing realword tasks and helps you get the job done much faster less coding and under budget
Just my 2 cents. Everyone has their opinion, and to some degree, if you have problems starting out, then a doc somewhere should have addressed. If it didn't, then shame on the velocity guys.
On the flip, I've been through Struts tags, JSTL, XTP (resin XML/XSL processing), webmacro, custom coding, and so on. I have to admit that velocity is quite awesome.
In taglibs, it's tough to build a reuseable web component without building another taglib. In velocity, it's a snap. Taglibs are also tough when you want to pass data from a bean into the parameter for the tag. Actually, without expression from JSTL, it's not possible at all. Struts href links cannot vary the URL (best I can tell), and you can only reference 1 query string parameter from a bean unless you pass a Map containing the multiple pairs. Velocity does this VERY well. Finally, JSP pages take for freak'in ever to process when I make a change. It's about 2-15 seconds depending on Tiles and the server. Velocity is instant.
I would like some overloading and whatnot, but hey, it's better than 90% of what's out there. It's make my life better. If there was an equiv for EJBs to make life easier, I'd buy rounds for everyone.
As for Coldfusion MX, the product is kinda steep, it's proprietary, and it's SLOW. However the FlexXML stuff is pretty cool. :)
Email me for more.
Posted by
Leif Ashley
on February 17, 2004 at 12:44 AM CST
#
A company called new atlanta makes CFML server called blue dragon for free, so it not steep and not proprietary, as far as slow I don't know what your comparing it to and there are many factors to consider, it all depends on job, but get your facts straight before commenting on what you don't know
Posted by
Robert Wilson
on February 20, 2004 at 02:41 PM CST
#
Did either of you last two notice this post is over a year old?
Posted by
Lance
on February 20, 2004 at 07:57 PM CST
#
Posted by Andy on January 18, 2003 at 06:16 PM CST
Website: http://cvs.apache.org/~acoliver #
I am an impatient man, no doubt about it. My first post to the user list was Jan. 15th, so I guess I met the 3 days (but not business days). I'm sure you are familiar with such frustration. When something like this actually wakes me up in the middle of the night, though, my impatience is only heightened.
Man, 3 business days means I'll have to wait until Tuesday!
Posted by Lance on January 18, 2003 at 06:32 PM CST #
Struts has so much traffic that if it doesn't get answered in 1 day - it's probably gone. At 150 messages a day, I doubt anyone goes through and reviews the old ones.
Posted by Matt Raible on January 18, 2003 at 06:44 PM CST #
One thing to realize about Velocity is that in many ways, it encourages doing things the right way (tm). Therefore, it sometimes requires people to think about things in ways that they might not have thought about them before, but results in a much better design.
I understand that you are expecting me to post some magical solution (scroll down to the velocimacro section to ways to configure the behavior of velocimacro's, which may have the solution you are looking for), but the reality is that in a web context, by itself Velocity sometimes needs extra help. This is because Velocity was designed to be more than just a webtool and is not tied to just one way of doing things. Think about it this way, if Struts is so great, how come I can't use the View portion (JSP) to do things other than just output HTML/XHTML? How come I can't use that "nice" tool to output SQL or Java or XXX outside of a web request?
Velocity is just so much more...give it a chance before you close your mind.
=)
-jon
Posted by Jon Stevens on January 19, 2003 at 03:02 PM CST
Website: http://studioz.tv/ #
I've actually been following Velocity since it was announced, but this is my first attempt at implementing something. And it does work in a web context, and I fully believe it'll do what I want, but I cannot get enough information from it as to WHY it isn't working: I'd like to be able to configure it to give me stacktraces (reread the 3rd paragraph of this entry). I've read the documentation, several times, nearly committing them to memory before I even began the task at hand. I've searched, I've read the mailing list archives (so far as I could find anything remotely related), and tried any "solutions" that were presented. I don't expect you or anyone else to hand me the magical solution, but I would like better than RTFM, because that job has been done, over and over again. And I've experimented with the various configuration points, tried locating the file in every conceivable place!
The stickler seems to be that Velocity cannot find the vm file at startup time, though it can find them later. But if it cannot find them, why doesn't it say ResourceNotFoundException rather than NullPointerException? Maybe it has something to do with the servlet container's (Resin) classloader - most likely - but I cannot find any references to help troubleshoot such issues.
And I don't think this has anything to do with Velocity vs. Struts: Struts/JSP were intended for a narrow task. Velocity was designed with a much broader scope in mind, and thats cool!
Anyhoo, sorry I flew off the handle and was rude to everyone. I'd much rather solve this on my own, asking for help is very much a last resolve for me. That I stooped to such attention-getting tactics speaks of my desperation.
Posted by Lance on January 19, 2003 at 07:21 PM CST #
Posted by Andy on January 19, 2003 at 09:54 PM CST
Website: http://cvs.apache.org/~acoliver #
Posted by Lance on January 20, 2003 at 09:05 AM CST #
Posted by Robert Wilson on October 02, 2003 at 01:49 PM CDT
Website: http://none #
On the flip, I've been through Struts tags, JSTL, XTP (resin XML/XSL processing), webmacro, custom coding, and so on. I have to admit that velocity is quite awesome.
In taglibs, it's tough to build a reuseable web component without building another taglib. In velocity, it's a snap. Taglibs are also tough when you want to pass data from a bean into the parameter for the tag. Actually, without expression from JSTL, it's not possible at all. Struts href links cannot vary the URL (best I can tell), and you can only reference 1 query string parameter from a bean unless you pass a Map containing the multiple pairs. Velocity does this VERY well. Finally, JSP pages take for freak'in ever to process when I make a change. It's about 2-15 seconds depending on Tiles and the server. Velocity is instant.
I would like some overloading and whatnot, but hey, it's better than 90% of what's out there. It's make my life better. If there was an equiv for EJBs to make life easier, I'd buy rounds for everyone.
As for Coldfusion MX, the product is kinda steep, it's proprietary, and it's SLOW. However the FlexXML stuff is pretty cool. :)
Email me for more.
Posted by Leif Ashley on February 17, 2004 at 12:44 AM CST #
Posted by Robert Wilson on February 20, 2004 at 02:41 PM CST #
Posted by Lance on February 20, 2004 at 07:57 PM CST #