A long, long time ago, ok, it was last Thursday, I posted about adding Markdown processing to BoxLang via the Flexmark Java library. After posting it, a few folks were curious why I didn’t use the native import process instead of createObject('java', '...') and the answer was simple – I just didn’t think about it! To give you an idea of the difference, let’s first consider the initial version:
function markdownToHTML(str) { // .init() is important! ds = createObject("java", "com.vladsch.flexmark.util.data.MutableDataSet","flexmark-all-0.64.8-lib.jar").init(); ps = createObject("java", "com.vladsch.flexmark.parser.Parser","flexmark-all-0.64.8-lib.jar").builder(ds).build(); hm = createObject("java", "com.vladsch.flexmark.html.HtmlRenderer","flexmark-all-0.64.8-lib.jar").builder(ds).build(); doc = ps.parse(str); return hm.render(doc); } In this version, I use createObject for my three Java objects to get to the final result I need, an HtmlRenderer object I can pass a parsed string to. Now consider this version:
import com.vladsch.flexmark.util.data.MutableDataSet; import com.vladsch.flexmark.parser.Parser; import com.vladsch.flexmark.html.HtmlRenderer; function markdownToHTML(str) { ds = new MutableDataSet(); ps = Parser.builder(ds).build(); hm = HtmlRenderer.builder(ds).build(); doc = ps.parse(str); return hm.render(doc); } This version is a heck of a lot simpler in terms of what’s being done. Technically the imports there break encapsulation from the simple UDF I had written, but I would have used a class in a real application anyway.
There is one small issue with this version and that’s finding the Jar. If you remember, with createObject I can point to the jar, so what do I do here?
If I’m running this in a web application, I’d just use javaSettings to specify it there. Outside of that, for right now there isn’t a simple one liner BIF (built-in function) with similar functionality, but we can hack it up like so:
import com.vladsch.flexmark.util.data.MutableDataSet; import com.vladsch.flexmark.parser.Parser; import com.vladsch.flexmark.html.HtmlRenderer; bx:application name="myJavaApp" javaSettings={ loadPaths = [ expandPath( 'flexmark-all-0.64.8-lib.jar' ) ] }; function markdownToHTML(str) { ds = new MutableDataSet(); ps = Parser.builder(ds).build(); hm = HtmlRenderer.builder(ds).build(); doc = ps.parse(str); return hm.render(doc); } The bx:application component essentially turns my script into a web application (for the execution of the template) and can therefore make use of javaSettings. As I said, a bit of a hack, but honestly, for CLI scripts I’m fine with that, and, there’s an open issue in the BoxLang Jira to add a proper BIF for this.
You can find this version in our bx-demos repo here: https://github.com/ortus-boxlang/bx-demos/blob/master/java-interop/flexmark2.bxs
Obviously, both versions work, and it comes down to which style you prefer in your code base, but it’s a good example of the flexibility in BoxLang!