Text Substitution Language: TSL

TSL IF statement

The IF statement enables you to selectively perform tasks within your TSL message, based on some criteria which evaluate to TRUE or FALSE.

Syntax

[[[IF expr]]] message [[[/IF]]]

Inputs

• expr: is an expression that evaluates to TRUE or FALSE

• message: is a TSL message, so it can contain plain text and other TSL statements

Example

Suppose you want to create a welcoming message after a user has logged in to your application. Then you could create the following TSL message:

Welcome [[[IF user.gender = 'male']]]Mr.[[[/IF]]] [[[IF user.gender = 'female']]]Mrs.[[[/IF]]] [[[user.first_name]]] [[[user.last_name]]]

When user John Doe logged on, the message shown in your application is: “Welcome Mr. John Doe”

When user Jane Doe logged on, the message shown in your application is: “Welcome Mrs. Jane Doe”

If the gender is unknown the message will look like this: “Welcome Jane Doe”

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TSL ELSEIF statement

The ELSEIF statement is a combination of ELSE and IF, which allows you to selectively perform an alternative tasks within a TSL IF block.

The task specified after the ELSEIF part of the statement is only executed if the previous IF expression (including previous ELSEIF expressions) evaluates to FALSE and the ELSEIF expression evaluates to TRUE.

You can have any number of ELSEIF statement after each other.

Syntax

[[[IF expr1]]] message1 [[[ELSEIF expr2]]] message2 [[[/IF]]]

Inputs

• expr1 and expr2: are expressions which evaluate to TRUE or FALSE

• message1 and message2: are TSL messages, so they can contain plain text and other TSL statements.

Example

Suppose you want to create a welcoming message after a user has logged in to your application. Then you could create the following TSL message:

[[[IF time.hour >= 0 AND time.hour < 6]]]Good night [[[ELSEIF time.hour >= 6 AND time.hour < 12]]]Good morning [[[ELSEIF time.hour >= 12 AND time.hour < 18]]]Good afternoon [[[ELSEIF time.hour >= 18 AND time.hour <= 23]]]Good evening[[[/IF]]] [[[user.first_name]]] [[[user.last_name]]]

When user John Doe logged on at 8 o’clock am, the message shown in your application is: “Good morning John Doe”

When user John Doe logged on at 7 o’clock pm, the message shown in your application is: “Good evening John Doe”

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TSL IF ELSE statement

The ELSE statement allows to perform a task when all previous IF or ELSEIF expressions evaluated to FALSE.

Syntax

[[[IF expr]]] message1 [[[ELSEIF expr2]]] message2 [[[ELSE]]] message3 [[[/IF]]]

Note that the ELSEIF statement is optional, and that the ELSE statement, if present, must always be the last statement within an IF.

Inputs

• expr: is an expression that evaluates to TRUE or FALSE

• message1, message2 and message3: are TSL messages, so they can contain plain text and other TSL statements

Example

Suppose you want to create a welcoming message after a user has logged in to your application. Then you could create the following TSL message:

Welcome [[[IF user.gender = 'male']]]Mr.[[[ELSE]]] Mrs.[[[/IF]]] [[[user.first_name]]] [[[user.last_name]]]

When user John Doe logged on, the message shown in your application is: “Welcome Mr. John Doe”

If the gender is unknown the message will look like this: “Welcome Jane Doe”

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TSL FOREACH statement

Use this statement to repeat a text for each instance of an entity.

Syntax

[[[FOREACH entity]]] message [[[/FOREACH]]]

Inputs

• entity: is an entity name

• message: is a TSL message, so it can contain plain text and other TSL conditions

Example

Suppose you want to create an overview of all registered users. Then you could create the following message:

[[[FOREACH user]]]Name: [[[user.last_name]]], [[[user.first_name]]][[[/FOREACH]]]

If you have three registered users: John Doe, Jane Doe and Mr X your user list would look like this: Name: Doe, John Name: Doe, Jane Name: X, Mr

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TSL sequence

Use this operator to add a sequence-number to each instance in a set of instances.

Note: The sequence operator returns the sequence-number of the FOREACH loop that it is used in. It is not the sequence in which the instances where created. The sequence number starts at 0.

Syntax

[[[#]]]

Input

• # is the sequence operator

Example

Suppose you want to create an overview of all registered users. Then you could create the following message:

[[[FOREACH user]]][[[#]]] [[[user.last_name]]], [[[user.first_name]]][[[/FOREACH]]]

If you have three registered users: John Doe, Jane Doe and Mr X your user list would look like this: 0 Doe, John 1 Doe, Jane 2 X, Mr

Or you want to create a comma separated list that contains all users:

[[[FOREACH user]]] [[[user.first_name]]] [[[user.last_name]]]
[[[IF # != (COUNT user.last_name) - 1]]], [[[ELSE]]]. [[[/IF]]]
[[[/FOREACH]]] /*end user loop*/

Than the result would look like this:

John Doe, Jane Doe, Mr X.

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TSL format

There are two different types of formatting available in TSL, number formats and date formats. Both formats are applied to attributes or expressions in the same way.

Syntax

[[[expression{format}]]]

Inputs

• expression: is a number or date

• format: is the number or date formatting

Numbers

In TSL, you can use number formats to change the appearance of numbers, without changing the number behind the appearance. The number format you apply does not affect the actual value. In this context a number can be any of the following basetypes; number, integer, currency or percentage.

The number formats used in TSL are common Java decimal formats. The most commonly used formatting symbols are listed below. For a complete documentation we refer to the online java documentation that is available at https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/11/docs/api/java.base/java/text/DecimalFormat.html.

These symbols are used to create a format pattern. How this pattern is created is shown in the examples below.

To use the symbols as ordinary characters in your expression use the escape character.

Examples

Dates

In TSL, you can use date formats to change the appearance of dates, without changing the date behind the appearance. The date format you apply does not affect the actual value.

These symbols are used to create a format pattern.

Examples

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