String replacement in java, similar to a velocity template

Question

Is there any String replacement mechanism in Java, where I can pass objects with a text, and it replaces the string as it occurs? For example, the text is:

Hello ${user.name},
Welcome to ${site.name}. 

The objects I have are user and site. I want to replace the strings given inside ${} with its equivalent values from the objects. This is same as we replace objects in a velocity template.

Allodial

Replace where? A class? A JSP? String has a format method if you just: String.format("Hello %s", username); – Recap

@Droo: In the example, string is like Hello ${user.name}, not like, Hello %s or Hello {0}. – Waves

If you need something that looks like velocity and smells like velocity, maybe it is velocity? :) – Exclamatory

@Droo: Its not a class. I've the above text in a "String" variable and wants to replace all the occurrences of the strings inside ${} with values in the corresponding objects. for example replace all ${user.name} with name property in "user" object. – Allodial

@serg: Yes it is a velocity code. and I wants to remove the velocity from my code. – Allodial

Possible duplicate to: https://mcmap.net/q/111763/-inserting-a-java-string-in-another-string-without-concatenation-duplicate/435605 – Lues

@Lues This is not a duplicate, since both posts have its own differences in requirement(though both are string replacements). Please refer the accepted answer to know what I meant. – Allodial

Maybe a bit late, but please see jeval.sourceforge.net. I have used this in a Grails application. It is a Java library. Very useful and covers more use cases than you need. It is a Formula evaluator as well. – Doralin

Answer 1

Use StringSubstitutor from Apache Commons Text.

Dependency import

Import the Apache commons text dependency using maven as bellow:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-text</artifactId>
    <version>1.10.0</version>
</dependency>

Example

Map<String, String> valuesMap = new HashMap<String, String>();
valuesMap.put("animal", "quick brown fox");
valuesMap.put("target", "lazy dog");
String templateString = "The ${animal} jumped over the ${target}.";
StringSubstitutor sub = new StringSubstitutor(valuesMap);
String resolvedString = sub.replace(templateString);

Tisman

Javadoc for StrSubstitutor commons.apache.org/lang/api-release/org/apache/commons/lang/… – Scottyscotus

Should be Map<String, String> valuesMap = new HashMap<String, String>();. – Podolsk

StrSubstitutor is now deprecated in https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/. User https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-text/ instead – Skewback

StrSubstitutor deprecated as of 1.3, use StringSubstitutor instead. This class will be removed in 2.0. Gradle dependency for importing StringSubstitutor is org.apache.commons:commons-text:1.4 – Cornejo

does it allow condition based substitution? – Confession

I got an error The import java.util.HashMap cannot be resolved – Conciliate

Just a remark. StringSubstitutor instance is created with a substitution map and then parses template strings with its replace method. That means it cannot pre-parse the template string, so processing the same template with different substitution maps may be less efficient. – Rosana

See this answer for more details. – Rosana

Answer 2

Take a look at the java.text.MessageFormat class, MessageFormat takes a set of objects, formats them, then inserts the formatted strings into the pattern at the appropriate places.

Object[] params = new Object[]{"hello", "!"};
String msg = MessageFormat.format("{0} world {1}", params);

Liebman

Thanks! I knew java should have an inbuilt way to do this without having to use are freaking template engine to do such a simple thing! – Subdiaconate

Seems like String.format can do anything this can do -- #2810133 – Wobbling

+1. Be aware format also takes an Object... varargs so you can use this more terse syntax where preferable format("{0} world {1}", "Hello", "!"); – Thanet

It should be noted that MessageFormat can only be reliably used for its namesake, display messages, not for output where technical formatting matters. Numbers for example will be formatted per locale settings, rendering them invalid for technical uses. – Tarp

Answer 3

My preferred way is String.format() because its a oneliner and doesn't require third party libraries:

String message = String.format("Hello! My name is %s, I'm %s.", name, age); 

I use this regularly, e.g. in exception messages like:

throw new Exception(String.format("Unable to login with email: %s", email));

Hint: You can put in as many variables as you like because format() uses Varargs

Diphthong

This is less useful when you need to repeat the same argument more than once. E.g.: String.format("Hello! My name is %s, I'm %s. Why is my name %s you ask? Well I'm only %s years old so I don't know", name, age, name, age);. Other answers here require specifying each argument only once. – Heilungkiang

@asherbar you can use argument index specifiers in the format string, e.g. String.format("Hello! My name is %1$s, I'm %2$s. Why is my name %1$s you ask? Well I'm only %2$s years old so I don't know", name, age) – Praetor

@Praetor I never knew that. Thanks! – Heilungkiang

Very similar to MessageFormat.format – Zephyrus

Amen. The less external dependencies, the better. – Employment

This gives me a warning in andriod studio saying "implicitly using default locale is a common source of bugs" I did String.format(Locale.US, ...); to prevent that. – Vetiver

Answer 4

I threw together a small test implementation of this. The basic idea is to call format and pass in the format string, and a map of objects, and the names that they have locally.

The output of the following is:

My dog is named fido, and Jane Doe owns him.

public class StringFormatter {

    private static final String fieldStart = "\\$\\{";
    private static final String fieldEnd = "\\}";

    private static final String regex = fieldStart + "([^}]+)" + fieldEnd;
    private static final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);

    public static String format(String format, Map<String, Object> objects) {
        Matcher m = pattern.matcher(format);
        String result = format;
        while (m.find()) {
            String[] found = m.group(1).split("\\.");
            Object o = objects.get(found[0]);
            Field f = o.getClass().getField(found[1]);
            String newVal = f.get(o).toString();
            result = result.replaceFirst(regex, newVal);
        }
        return result;
    }

    static class Dog {
        public String name;
        public String owner;
        public String gender;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Dog d = new Dog();
        d.name = "fido";
        d.owner = "Jane Doe";
        d.gender = "him";
        Map<String, Object> map = new HashMap<String, Object>();
        map.put("d", d);
        System.out.println(
           StringFormatter.format(
                "My dog is named ${d.name}, and ${d.owner} owns ${d.gender}.", 
                map));
    }
}

Note: This doesn't compile due to unhandled exceptions. But it makes the code much easier to read.

Also, I don't like that you have to construct the map yourself in the code, but I don't know how to get the names of the local variables programatically. The best way to do it, is to remember to put the object in the map as soon as you create it.

The following example produces the results that you want from your example:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    Map<String, Object> map = new HashMap<String, Object>();
    Site site = new Site();
    map.put("site", site);
    site.name = "StackOverflow.com";
    User user = new User();
    map.put("user", user);
    user.name = "jjnguy";
    System.out.println(
         format("Hello ${user.name},\n\tWelcome to ${site.name}. ", map));
}

_{I should also mention that I have no idea what Velocity is, so I hope this answer is relevant.}

Buckles

This is what I was looking for. Thank you for giving an implementation. I was trying for it and getting incorrect results. :D. Anyway it solved my problem. – Allodial

@Joe, glad I could help. It was a good excuse for me to finally practice writing some code that uses reflection in Java. – Buckles

Nice Utility. Since java 9, you can now inline the map and pass the populated map as parameter e.g. Map.of ("user", user, "site", site), instead of creating the map separately. This will further simplify calling the "format" method. – Abomb

Answer 5

Here's an outline of how you could go about doing this. It should be relatively straightforward to implement it as actual code.

1. Create a map of all the objects that will be referenced in the template.
2. Use a regular expression to find variable references in the template and replace them with their values (see step 3). The Matcher class will come in handy for find-and-replace.
3. Split the variable name at the dot. user.name would become user and name. Look up user in your map to get the object and use reflection to obtain the value of name from the object. Assuming your objects have standard getters, you will look for a method getName and invoke it.

Presence

Heh, just saw this answer. It is identical to mine. Please let me know what you think of my implementation. – Buckles

Answer 6

Java now has string templates (from version 21, as a preview feature).

See the string templates proposal (JEP 430) here.

It is something along the lines of this:

String name = "John";
String info = STR."I am \{name}";
System.out.println(info); // I am John

---

P.S. Kotlin is 100% interoperable with Java. It supports cleaner string templates out of the box:

val name = "John"
val info = "I am $name"
println(info) // I am John

Combined with extension functions, you can achieve the same thing the Java template processors (e.g. STR) will do.

Per

Answer 7

There are a couple of Expression Language implementations out there that does this for you, could be preferable to using your own implementation as or if your requirments grow, see for example JUEL and MVEL

I like and have successfully used MVEL in at least one project.

Also see the Stackflow post JSTL/JSP EL (Expression Language) in a non JSP (standalone) context

Appositive

all links are dead – Hartzog

Well, the answer was given over 10 years ago and I just updated the only dead link... :-) – Appositive

Answer 8

Since Java 15 you have the method String.formatted() (see documentation).

str.formatted(args) is the equivalent of String.format(str, args) with less ceremony.

For the example mentioned in the question, the method could be used as follows:

"Hello %s, Welcome to %s.".formatted(user.getName(), site.getName())

Glassman

Answer 9

Handlebars.java might be a better option in terms of a Velocity-like syntax with other server-side templating features.

http://jknack.github.io/handlebars.java/

Handlebars handlebars = new Handlebars();
Template template = handlebars.compileInline("Hello {{this}}!");
System.out.println(template.apply("Handlebars.java"));

Ormandy

Answer 10

I use GroovyShell in java to parse template with Groovy GString:

Binding binding = new Binding();
GroovyShell gs = new GroovyShell(binding);
// this JSONObject can also be replaced by any Java Object
JSONObject obj = new JSONObject();
obj.put("key", "value");
binding.setProperty("obj", obj)
String str = "${obj.key}";
String exp = String.format("\"%s\".toString()", str);
String res = (String) gs.evaluate(exp);
// value
System.out.println(str);

Homeland

Answer 11

I created this utility that uses vanilla Java. It combines two formats... {} and %s style from String.format.... into one method call. Please note it only replaces empty {} brackets, not {someWord}.

public class LogUtils {

    public static String populate(String log, Object... objects) {
        log = log.replaceAll("\\{\\}", "%s");
        return String.format(log, objects);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(populate("x = %s, y ={}", 5, 4));;
    }

}

Persia

Answer 12

There is nothing out of the box that is comparable to velocity since velocity was written to solve exactly that problem. The closest thing you can try is looking into the Formatter

http://cupi2.uniandes.edu.co/site/images/recursos/javadoc/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/Formatter.html

However the formatter as far as I know was created to provide C like formatting options in Java so it may not scratch exactly your itch but you are welcome to try :).

Labuan