The Discus Template Language contains a large number of "text operations" which manipulate variables and strings into an appropriate format for display or storage. These functions are listed here in the order in which they are most used.

1. Replacing Text with Other Text
2. Dates and Times
3. Upper/Lower Case Text
4. Truncation
5. Spacing with {...}
6. Repeated Text
7. Forms
8. Escape/Unescape Text
9. HTML Operations
10. CSS Compatibility
11. Word Wrapping
12. Space Padding

It is common to replace one bit of text with another bit of text. The Discus Template Language allows you to do this directly from within the templates. Your operation is on a variable, and the following must appear on a line of its own:

<#replace "old_text" with "new_text" in $variable#>

The above code replaces ALL occurrences of old_text with new_text in $variable. The replacement is case-INsensitive. You are free to use variables in place of old_text and new_text as necessary.

<#define $text = "Discus is bad software"#>
<#replace "bad" with "good" in $text#>
$text

Discus is good software

It is a common operation to convert from a unix time (expressed as the number of seconds since January 1, 1970) into a human-readable format. The Discus Template Language date function allows you to perform many manipulations of the date format in performing these conversions. The time at which this document was written is December 19, 2001 at 2:44:50 PM. In the unix time format, this is 1008794690. The date command is used to convert this into a human-readable format:

<#date unix_time_format_date format "human readable date format"#>

The following variables can be used when setting up the human readable date format string:

Variable	Meaning	Example
%weekday	Day of the week from language.conf	Wednesday
%wkdy.	Abbreviated weekday from language.conf	Wed.
%wkdy_	Abbreviated weekday from language.conf, no period	Wed
%hour	Hour of the day, in 12-hour (AM/PM) format	10
%24hour	Hour of the day, in 24-hour format	22
%minute	The number of minutes	44
%second	The number of seconds	12
%ampm	Whether it is AM or PM	am
%month	Name of the month from language.conf	December
%mon.	Abbreviated month from language.conf	Dec.
%mon_	Abbreviated month from language.conf, no period	Dec
%nmonth	Number of the month	12
%day	Number of the day	19
%year	Number of the year in 4-digit format	2001
%2year	Number of the year in 2-digit format	01

Commonly, the date format is derived from the language.conf file by defining it with a variable, such as $L{LONG_DATE}. Here are some examples of how the date command is used to operate on the time 1008794690.

<#date 1008794690 format "%day/%mon_/%year:%24hour:%minute:%second"#>
<#date 1008794690 format "%wkdy_ %mon_ %day %24hour:%minute:%second CST %year"#>
<#date 1008794690 format "%mon_ %day %24hour:%minute:%second CST %year"#>

19/Dec/2001:14:44:50
Wed Dec 19 14:44:50 CST 2001
Dec 19 14:44:50

Note that you can include text (commonly HTML formatting) within the date format string. As long as this is not identical to a recognized variable, your text will survive the date conversion. Note that "CST" in the second example, as well as all of the spaces within the formats, are all simply passed through.

There are two other functions that are related to time and date:

Pattern	Meaning
<#current time#>	Server's current time in unix time format
<#gmtoffset#>	Number of seconds by which your server's local time differs from GMT time

It is often useful to capitalize a word. You can also ensure that the first letter of a word is lower case.

<#define $text = "discus Pro"#>
\u$text
\lDISCUSSION BOARD

Discus Pro
dISCUSSION BOARD

The Discus Template Language allows you to truncate text to a certain number of characters. You can do this by simply disregarding any of the text after your character limit, or by adding characters (such as "...") at the end of the truncated text if it exceeds the limit.

The Template Language is intelligent in that it counts characters based on the number of characters displayed, not the number of characters in the string. For example, the string "Hello <b>world</b>" (without the quotes) counts as 11 characters (the <b> and </b>) do not count, since they do not make the display any longer. As another example, the string "1&nbsp;2" (without the quotes) counts as 3 characters (the &nbsp; displays as 1 character even though it's actually 6 characters long).

<#define $text = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"#>
<#maxchar 10 $text#>
<#maxchar 15/... $text#>

ABCDEFGHIJ
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO...

As described in "Treatment of Spaces" in the "General Template Structure" document, the Discus Template Language collapses multiple consecutive spaces into a single space, and trims whitespace from the left and right end of the line. However, there are cases where it is desirable to force the inclusion of more than 1 consecutive space character, or where you wish to use a tab character. The following special characters force the indicated number of spaces:

{|}     ## Null (useful to separate variables if needed)
{||}    ## 1 space
{|||}   ## 2 spaces
{||||}  ## 3 spaces
...
{|tab|} ## Tab character

You can insert as many consecutive spaces as you want using the {||...||} style of code. The number of spaces you're inserting is always one less than the number of vertical bars (|) you have between the braces. The code {|||} has three vertical bars, which creates a total of two spaces between vertical bars, and thus inserts two consecutive spaces into your template.

This function lets you supply text and the number of times that text is to be repeated. The text is then repeated the number of times you specify.

<#define $number = "2"#>
<#repeated 5 "Hello"#>
<#repeated $number "Good Bye "#>

HelloHelloHelloHelloHello
Good Bye Good Bye

The following functions are available to prepare and manipulate data presented on forms.

<#form escape "text"#>

This function converts characters within text into their HTML equivalents so that the result can be put within a FORM input or textarea box. (If the text itself contained quotation marks or HTML code, it may confuse some browsers.) The specific characters converted are, in this order: & < > " '

<#define $text = "the word "blah""#>
Without escape:
<input type=text value="$text">
With escape:
<input type=text value="<#form escape "$text"#>">

Escaping text ensures that it will be properly transmitted within forms. This is the same format used to format URLs. Spaces are translated to the plus sign (+), and non-alphanumeric characters are converted into a hex code equivalent. Unescaping the text is the inverse function.

<#escape "I'm testing"#>
<#unescape "I%27m+testing"#>

I%27m+testing
I'm testing

Often it is necessary to remove HTML code before rendering the result in the template. This is frequently needed when preparing text for rendering via JavaScript. There are two text functions that deal with removing HTML. The "remove html" function removes all HTML code (<...> and &...; codes). The "javascript prepare" function does the same thing as the "remove html" function, except that it removes the apostrophe (') character, which browsers just can't seem to get consistently right when rendering JavaScript code.

<#define $text = "<i>Discus</i> Pro can't be beat"#>
$text
<#remove html "$text"#>
<#javascript prepare "$text"#>

Discus Pro can't be beat
Discus Pro can't be beat
Discus Pro cant be beat

If templates or skins make use of cascading style sheets, it is often helpful to translate the user's chosen font size (on the HTML scale of size 1 to 7, or relative scale -7 to +7) into a similar font size for cascading style sheets (on a point scale like those used in word processors). The syntax below replaces a number from 1 to 7 with the appropriate CSS point size:

<#css size (2)#>
<#css size (-1)#>

8pt
10pt

The Discus Template Language has word wrapping built in. You specify the maximum number of characters per line you want and supply the text, and word wrapping automatically occurs by inserting newline characters as appropriate.

<#define $text = "word1 word2 word3 word4 word5 word6"#>
<#wordwrap 15 "$text"#>

word1 word2
word3 word4
word5 word6

When you are operating with a fixed-width font, it is often useful to insert a bit of text, and then an appropriate number of spaces after that text, so that the overall length of the line is constant. If the length of the line you specify is shorter than the text you are padding, then the text is truncated.

<#define $text = "1234567890"#>
<#rtpad 15 "$text"#>Test1
<#rtpad 10 "$text"#>Test2
<#rtpad 5 "$text"#>Test3

1234567890     Test1
1234567890Test2
12345Test3