Keep indentation when including template with FreeMarker - freemarker

Question

When I include a template with <#include ...> directive, the content of that template is inserted starting from column 0 and not where the include tag was located. Is it possible to tell FreeMarker to respect indentation?

Answer 1

You could use macros and pass them the indentation as a parameter. Consider, for example, building a list of courses in YAML format, where each one has a list of students.
report.ftl:
<#include "course.ftl" parse=true>
<#include "faculty.ftl" parse=true>
<#include "student.ftl" parse=true>
<#list report as course>
<#newCourse course = course indent = 0/>
</#list>
course.ftl:
<#include "faculty.ftl" parse=true>
<#include "student.ftl" parse=true>
<#macro newCourse course indent>
<#local padding = ""?left_pad(4*indent)/>
${padding}course:
${padding} code: ${course.code}
${padding} name: ${course.name}
<#newFaculty code = "${course.faculty.code}" name = "${course.faculty.name}" indent = indent + 1/>
${padding} students:
<#list course.students as student>
<#newStudent code = "${student.code}" name = "${student.name}" indent = indent + 2/>
</#list>
</#macro>
faculty.ftl:
<#macro newFaculty code name indent>
<#local padding = ""?left_pad(4*indent)/>
${padding}faculty:
${padding} code: ${code}
${padding} name: ${name}
</#macro>
student.ftl:
<#macro newStudent code name indent>
<#local padding = ""?left_pad(4*indent)/>
${padding}- student:
${padding} code: ${code}
${padding} name: ${name}
</#macro>
pojos:
class Course {
private String code;
private String name;
private Faculty faculty;
private List<Student> students = new ArrayList<>();
}
class Faculty {
private String code;
private String name;
}
class Student {
private String code;
private String name;
}