How to output ${expression} in Freemarker without it being interpreted?

Question

I'm trying to use Freemarker in conjunction with jQuery Templates.

Both frameworks use dollar sign/curly brackets to identify expressions for substitution (or as they're called in freemarker, "interpolations") , e.g. ${person.name} .

So when I define a jQuery Template with expressions in that syntax, Freemarker tries to interpret them (and fails).

I've tried various combinations of escaping the ${ sequence to pass it through Freemarker to no avail - \${, \$\{, $\{, etc.

Inserting a freemarker comment in between the dollar and the curly (e.g. $<#-- -->{expression}) DOES work - but I'm looking for a more concise and elegant solution.

Is there a simpler way to get a Freemarker template to output the character sequence ${?

Answer 1

This should print ${person.name}:

${r"${person.name}"} 

From the freemarker docs

A special kind of string literals is the raw string literals. In raw string literals, backslash and ${ have no special meaning, they are considered as plain characters. To indicate that a string literal is a raw string literal, you have to put an r directly before the opening quotation mark or apostrophe-quote

Answer 2

For longer sections without FreeMarker markup, use <#noparse>...</#noparse>.

Starting with FreeMarker 2.3.28, configure FreeMarker to use square bracket syntax ([=exp]) instead of brace syntax (${exp}) by setting the interpolation_syntax configuration option to square_bracket.

Note that unlike the tag syntax, the interpolation syntax cannot be specified inside the template. Changing the interpolation syntax requires calling the Java API:

Configuration cfg; // ... cfg.setInterpolationSyntax(SQUARE_BRACKET_INTERPOLATION_SYNTAX); 

Then FreeMarker will consider ${exp} to be static text.

Do not confuse interpolation syntax with tag syntax, which also can have square_bracket value, but is independent of the interpolation syntax.

When using FreeMarker-based file PreProcessor (FMPP), either configure the setting via config.fmpp or on the command-line, such as:

fmpp --verbose --interpolation-syntax squareBracket ... 

This will call the appropriate Java API prior to processing the file.

See also:

• https://freemarker.apache.org/docs/dgui_misc_alternativesyntax.html
• http://fmpp.sourceforge.net/settings.html#templateSyntax