Velocity is a lightweight, server-side templating language built for rendering markup and text templates in a clean and simple way. There are many competing templating systems built in java, from jsps to Freemarker to XML transformation type languages. We have developed in all of these technologies and in our opinion, none of them come close to the speed, cleanliness and ease of use of Velocity. Here are some reasons we use Velocity in dotCMS
- Mature: Velocity is a mature, open source Apache Project
- Flexible: Velocity can easily be used to deliver any templated text, be it html, xml, json, css, javascript or web components.
- Fast: Velocity is extraordinarily fast to render.
- Easy: Velocity has a very shallow learning curve - Web page designers and HTMLers with ANY scripting experience (Javascript, PHP, Cold Fusion) can use it to build dynamic, content driven sites that leverage the power of custom Java methods without having to learn Java code.
- Extensible: Velocity (as a language) is easy to extend. For example, it is trivial for a Java developer to build custom Java classes and methods that can be used by site builders and web page designers that provides them access to custom or integrated data or tools.
The following documentation sections show how to use and create Velocity Viewtools on your own dotCMS instance.
