Velocity Template Language (VTL) Command-Line Interface

This is simple Java command-line application that uses Apache Velocity to 'merge' VTL templates from shell scripts.

Features:

• Apache Velocity 1.7 template engine
• Output to the console or to a file
• Context variables can be provided in:
  • Command line parameters
  • Environment variables
  • YAML file
• Configurable encoding for input and output
• One small fully executable JAR file (no java -jar... on Linux and z/OS)
• Works everywhere where is Java

Build

./gradlew build

Installation

1. Download https://github.com/plavjanik/vtl-cli/releases/download/v0.1.1/vtl.zip:

    curl -LO https://github.com/plavjanik/vtl-cli/releases/download/v0.1.1/vtl.zip
   

2. Extract it:

    unzip vtl.zip
   

3. There are several files available:

   • vtl-cli.jar for execution by the java -jar vtl-cli.jar command
   • vtl for execution by the vtl command on Linux systems with java in PATH or JAVA_HOME set
   • zos/vtl for execution by the vtl command on z/OS systems

Usage

java -jar build/vtl-cli.jar templates/hello.vtl -c name=world

or

vtl templates/hello.vtl -c name=world

If the hello.vtl file contains:

Hello, ${name}!

Then the standard output of vtl-cli is:

Hello, world!

Syntax

vtl [-e] [-ie=<inputEncoding>] [-o=<outputFile>] [-oe=<outputEncoding>] [-y=<yamlContextFile>] [-ye=<yamlEncoding>]
    [-c=variable=value]... FILE

Parameters:
      FILE                 File with a Velocity template to process

Options:
      -ie, --input-encoding=<inputEncoding>
                           UTF8, ISO8859-1, Cp1047, ... - see https://goo.gl/yn2pJZ
  -c, --context=variable=value
                           Context variable for Velocity (can be repeated)
  -y, --yaml-context=<yamlContextFile>
                           YAML file with context variables
      -ye, --yaml-encoding=<yamlEncoding>
                           UTF8, ISO8859-1, Cp1047, ...
  -e, --env-context        Set the context variables from environment
  -o, --out=<outputFile>   Output file (default: print to console)
      -oe, --output-encoding=<outputEncoding>
                           UTF8, ISO8859-1, Cp1047, ...

Loading context from YAML file

You can write context variables into a YAML file - for example:

name: world

and the use it:

vtl --yaml-context templates/hello.yml templates/hello.vtl

If you have nested YAML properties like:

nested:
    name: world

you can references it as ${nested.name}.

VTL

The template language is described in Velocity User Guide.

Releasing

The new releases are done by Travis CI after new tag is created:

git tag v0.1.0
git push --tags