A class similar to MGffTemplate is used in IDLdoc to produce all its output. When I changed from a bunch of print statements scattered over various methods of a class to templates where all the output is in a template file, it was a <em>lot</em> easier to focus on the content of the output. If you need to generate text-based reports (HTML, XML, LaTeX, DocBook, etc.) from IDL, I would suggest using this class.

The files needed to use the template are the MGffTemplate class (docs) and the MGffTokenizer class (docs).

Let’s take a look at a simple example. In this example, mg_template_example.pro (docs) will use the template file image-file.tt to produce this output (source code of output). The code in mg_template_example queries an image file and gets a structure, info.

filename = filepath('people.jpg', subdir=['examples', 'data'])
result = query_image(filename, info)

Then it simply creates a template from the template file, passes the info structure and the name of output file to the process method, and frees the template object.

otemplate = obj_new('MGffTemplate', 'image-file.tt')
otemplate->process, info, 'image.html'
obj_destroy, otemplate

This is easy, the real work for doing output is now in the template file. The template file is just a text file, most of which will be copied verbatim into the output. But there are directives enclosed in [% and %] that pass commands to the template object. Output in the directives will be processed in some way (depending on the directive) and then included in the output. The simplest directive simply inserts a variable into the output. For example,

Number of bands[% channels %]

Here channels was a field of the info structure passed into the process method. Also, any IDL expression that returns a string (or can be converted to a string) can be used, like

Dimensions[% strjoin(strtrim(dimensions, 2), ', ') %]

where dimensions was a field of the info structure.

There are other directives for FOR loops, IF statements, and several ways to include other files. More on these features later; I hoping to create a more complicated example that uses some of these features soon.