luatpl enables Lua to be used as an imperative template specification language. This is similar to how PHP, ASP, JSP, etc. are integrated to HTML.
Every code inside a [! and !] is handled as a Lua code. If we just want to
print a value of a string we can use the notation [!=variable!].
In particular, the use of Lua as basis for template specification and processing allowed us to use our solution to develop iDTV application based on Ginga middleware, even that live generated ones.
In order to use the luatpl you just need to run lua as follows:
$ ./luatpl TEMPLATE DATAMODEL
in which TEMPLATE is the path for a luatpl template file and DATAMODEL is
the data model specification file (any .lua program can be used as a data
model). The next section shows a simple example of a luatpl template and a
data model file.
The slides show example is an NCL document with inlined Lua code that after processed will presents a media after another (in sequence). The template user must inform only the list of media objects that must be played in sequence.
<body>
<port id="port1" component="[!=media[1].id!]" />
<media id="[!=media[1].id!]" src="[!=media[1].src!]"/>
[!for i=2,#media do!]
<media id="[!=media[i].id!]" src="[!=media[i].src!]"/>
<link xconnector="onEndStart">
<bind component="[!=media[i-1].id!]" role="onEnd"/>
<bind component="[!=media[i].id!]" role="start"/>
</link>
[!end!]
</body>media = {
{ id = "media1", src="media/media1.mp4" },
{ id = "media2", src="media/media2.mp4"},
{ id = "media3", src="media/media3.mp4" },
{ id = "media4", src="media/media3.mp4" }
};