[Opensource] Expresso with CF, ASP, etc.

[Rick Goeltz]

Gang:

[Marc said...]
 > I am wondering if it is possible to use Expresso as an engine with other
 > presentation languages, such as Cold Fusion or ASP.

[and Michael Rimov said...]
 > Using this method, you can certainly forward, for example, the Controller
 > Output to a Velocity template by forwarding it to the the Velocity
 > rendering engine.  It shouldn't be too bad to do either.

I need to work on that for a customer.

Let me describe my JSP development history:

1) JSP Model 1

2) JSP Model 2 (would never go back to Model 1)

3) Expresso DB with Velocity (i.e., I did my own controller)

4) Expresso complete; I'm *trying* but not always pleased

I currently have a customer who wants to use DBObjects using #3.  Also I 
have a fairly large project trying to use #4.

In #3, in the controller, you simply drop DBOjects and/or a query 
Vector/List into the "response context" of Velocity.  The Velocity code to 
display them in the view is short and sweet.  In contrast, to me, Expresso 
Struts is a lot of work/code for a simple task.  Also, I'm having trouble 
learning it (as are some others on this list).  (Also, unfortunately, 
Tomcat 4.1.10 had JSP bugs; no wonder I couldn't get it to work ;)

Some work has already been done (by others) to integrate Struts and 
Velocity.  The Velocity home page mentions Roller 
(http://www.rollerweblogger.org/index.html) and another piece of work at 
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs/jakarta-velocity-tools/.  Good starting points.

For my customer, we'll start with a simple implementation of #3, keeping 
his current controller methods (one step at a time).

For my large project using #4, I could use some encouragement.  Yes, I see 
(some of) the power of nested blocks/outputs (e.g., master-detail).  On the 
other hand, I'm dismayed at maintaining large chucks of tags that 
Dreamweaver can't render.  I hope productivity picks up soon.


Rick