Text Substitution Language (TSL)

Additional formatting of these substituted texts is available, for dates and numbers. Furthermore, by using TSL statements combined with functions and expressions, it enables you to create conditional text blocks.

TSL can be used in all Blueriq Studio assets.

TSL anchors are used to mark attributes or expressions to be interpreted as TSL.

So if you want to use an attribute value in a text block, you insert the attribute at the position you want the value to appear and enclose it with TSL-anchors.

If you want to interpret an expression in a text block, place the expression between the TSL anchors.

[text] [[[expr]]] [text]

• expr is an attribute or expression that you want interpreted by the TSL
• [text] plain text

Note: You cannot ‘nest’ anchors. So [[[<expr1>[[[< expr2>]]]]]] will result in an error.

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

Welcome [[[user.first_name]]] [[[user.last_name]]]

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

You can use TSL comment tags in order to add comment to your TSL.

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

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

• Expr: is an expression that evaluates to TRUE or FALSE
• Message: is a TSL message, so it can contain plain text and other TSL conditions

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”

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

When TRUE executes the task specified in the IF part of the statement, in all other cases executes the task specified in the ELSE part of the statement.

[[[IF expr]]] message1 [[[ELSE]]] message2 [[[/IF]]]

• expr: is an expression that evaluates to TRUE or FALSE
• message1 and message2: are TSL messages, so they can contain plain text and other TSL conditions

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”

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

When TRUE executes the task specified in the IF part of the statement, the task specified in the ELSEIF part of the statement is only executed when the specified criteria are met.

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

• 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 conditions.

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”

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

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

• Entity: is an entity name
• Message: is a TSL message, so it can contain plain text and other TSL conditions

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

Use this statement to repeat a text for a subset of instances of an entity.

• entity: is the child entity
• relation: is the relationship between the parent and the child entity
• message: is a TSL message, so it can contain plain text and other TSL conditions

Suppose you created a parent and a child entity. The parent has a multivalue relation with the child via the attribute Parent.Has_Children.

If the following instances where created:

To create an overview of the children per parent you could create the following TSL message:

[[[FOREACH Parent]]] [[[Parent.Name]]] has children: [[[FOREACH Child IN Parent.Has_children]]] Name: [[[Child.Name]]] Date of birth: [[[Child.Date_of_birth]]], [[[/FOREACH]]] [[[/FOREACH]]]

This results in:

John has children: Name: Kim Date of birth: 26-09-1998, Name: Rick Date of birth: 13-05-2000, Name: Bob Date of birth: 03-08-2003 Dave has children: Name: Mary Date of birth: 04-06-1982

FOREACH WHERE statement

Syntax

[[[FOREACH entity WHERE condition]]] message [[[/FOREACH]]]

Example

Suppose you have multiple persons. If the following instances where created:

To create an overview of all persons older than 40 you could create the following TSL message:

Persons older than 40: [[[FOREACH Person WHERE Person.Age>40]]] [[[Person.Name]]], [[[Person.Age]]]; [[[/FOREACH]]]

This results in:

Persons older than 40: Angela, 47; Dave, 82;

When you use the FOREACH or FOREACH IN statement to repeat a text for multiple instances, you can add the ORDER BY statement to create an ordered list of texts. Add either DESC if you want to sort the list descending or ASC if you want to order the list ascending.

FOREACH <entity> ORDER BY <attr> DESC|ASC
FOREACH <entity> IN <relation> ORDER BY <attr> DESC|ASC

The ORDER BY statement has the following arguments:

• attr (Required) – the attribute by which the list of instances will be ordered

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.

[[[#]]]

• # is the sequence operator

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.

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.

[[[expression{format}]]]

• § expression: is a number or date
• § format: is the number or date formatting

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 1.4 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 http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/DecimalFormat.html.

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

Note: the following characters have a special meaning in the format patterns:

0#,.-;%¤’

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

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.

The date formats used in TSL are common Java 1.4 date 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 http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html.

The number of symbol letters you specify also determines the format. For example, if the “zz” pattern results in “PDT,” then the “zzzz” pattern generates “Pacific Daylight Time.” The following table summarizes these rules and symbols:

These symbols are used to create a format pattern.

The given date and time are 04-08-2004 16:20:56 local time in the Central European Time Zone: