Installation

npm install --global cftemplate

Use

cftemplate form.cftemplate                         > form.cform
cftemplate form.cftemplate variables.json          > form.cform
cftemplate form.cftemplate variables.json logic.js > form.cform

Template Directives

• (( publisher/projects@edition )) includes a project from api.commonform.org.

• (( 543cd5e172cfc6b3c20a0d91855fea44b5bf2fd1da7bf6b7c69f95d6e2705c37 )) includes a form from api.commonform.org.

• (( require file.cftemplate )) includes another cftemplate.

• (( require directory/file.cform )) includes a Common Form markup file.

• (( require other/directories/file.json )) includes a Common Form JSON file

• (( if x begin ))more markup(( end )) includes more markup only if there is an x template variable and its value is truthy.

• (( unless x begin ))more markup(( end )) includes more markup only if there isn't any x template variable or its value is falsey.

About Conditional Logic

The syntax for if x begin allows the Boolean operators and, or, not, but there are two rules:

• you MUST parenthesize every application of those operators.
• you MUST leave spaces around the parentheses.

So: (( if ( ( foo and bar ) or ( not baz ) ) begin )) is OK.

You can't do bare foo or bar and baz conjunctions because we haven't implemented precedence yet.

You can't do (( if ( foo and ( bar )) begin )) because the parser isn't smart enough to distinguish the first )) from the second.

See tests/boolops/input.cftemplate for comprehensive examples.

About Business Logic

Maybe you use if and unless conditionals in the cftemplate to switch blocks of text on and off. Maybe the propositions in those if/unless conditions are determined by business rules operating against the values in your variables.json.

For example, you might have (( if (extendedAppendix and (not skipAllExtensions) ) begin )). These keys might not exist in the user-supplied context JSON, but could be computed by applying rules to values in the context. Those rules are called business logic.

With a third, optional, argument,

cftemplate form.cftemplate variables.json logic.js > form.cform

logic.js contains template-specific business logic that extends variables.json with control parameters computed from those data variables.

Those control parameters will be present during the evaluation of the form.cftemplate.

If no logic.js is provided your control parameters will have to be present in variables.json directly.

logic.js is also a good place to put other code to mutate or extend user-supplied variables.json.

The business logic is up to you. If you want you can write TypeScript or whatever as long as it provides the right interface.

See examples/id.js for an example of a pass-through "identity" function.