Expand a boolean variable to the string "true" or "false"

Question

In a freemarker template I want to expand a boolean variable to a string like that:

<#assign booleanVar = "test".isEmpty() />
state: ${booleanVar} <#-- this throws an exception! -->

This is what I want to get as output:

state: false

The only way I found to reach this goal by now is:

state: <#if booleanVar>true<#else>false</#if>

Is there a easier way to do it?

Answer 1

booleanVar?string("true", "false")

Although true/false is default, so

booleanVar?string

should work fine.

Answer 2

Starting from FreeMarker 2.3.20, if you want to print true/false (because you are generating JavaScript or such), write ${booleanVar?c} (?c for "computer format", also used for numbers). ${booleanVar?string} is dangerous for that, since somebody can set the boolean_format setting to yes,no or something... (BTW, in that case ${booleanVar} will work too in 2.3.20, and you get yes and no.)

See: http://freemarker.org/docs/ref_builtins_boolean.html#ref_builtin_c_boolean