Replace and Render Plugin

there is no pid for jira, so I've added my comments here:

1) link from annotation guide documentation is incorrect:
gives: http://www.adaptavist.com/display/USERGUIDE/replace-and-render+macro
should be:
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFEXT/Replace+and+Render+Plugin

2) http://jira.adaptavist.com/browse/RNR is invalid

3) replace and render no longer exists on adaptavist site that I could find, by search or by index into their custom macros

4) feature request:

• content from 'replace-body' could be taken from an attachment or an 'included' page - allows a rudimentary template system

5) feature request:

• allow a shorthand notation where you have a simple replacement:
  Unknown macro: {replace-and-render}

  content

  will replace any occurance of key with value in content and render the content as wiki.

example was:

{replace-and-render:key=value}content{replace-and-render}

This has some overlap with the Run macro.

Run macro is now Run Plugin

A great extension to the [replace-and-render plugin] which would differentiate it from the Run Plugin would be a 'foreach' capability: For example:

{foreach}
{foreach-head}
|| Item || Link || Page Titles || Labelled Pages ||
{foreach-head}
{foreach-tail}{foreach-tail}
{foreach-body}
|| %item% | [%item%] | {search:query=title:%item%} | {contentbylabel:%item%} |
{foreach-body}
{foreach-list:%item%}
alpha
beta
gamma
{foreach-list}
{foreach}

that would render a table with 4 rows and the obvious replacements

But this could be a fairly simple patch to replace-and-render that includes a new tag,

• Each line of the list is rendered.
• the head / body and tail are assembled as wiki and rendered as one step
• Not that I know a use case yet, but if you had multiple lists, it would do all permutations of replacements.
• leading and trailing whitespace and newlines for the head and tail are ignored

There are two very useful macros, Zones Plugin and Replace and Render Plugin, which were once-offs and Alain and Jason don't have time to support / extend them. Perhaps you or the community would combine them, as they are essentially the same thing, except:

• replace and render allows you to specify more useful replace strings, such as %var%, which can be used as macro parameters, unlike {zone:var}
• replace and render can take the template body from the current page (for one-time replacements), while zones, it seems, cannot
• zones very elegantly allow you to get the source from another page, while replace-and-render only uses it's own body.

Both are very simple, and very useful, and provide fundamental functionality missing from Confluence.

Currently, I almost always use both together because of each's deficiencies and strengths (a replace-and-render, wrapped in a zone-template)

replace-and-render would be redundant if:
a) zones supported the {zone-data:%var%}value{zone-data} or {zone-data:$var}value{zone-data} syntax for replacing %var% and $var, respectively, for use in macro parameters
b) supported a {zone-body}body{zone-body} tag which, if present, would override the parameter to zone-template-instance that looked for the body on another page.

zone-templates would be redundant if:
a) replace and render could optionally get it's body from the replace-body tag (as it does currently), or from a remote page using {replace-and-render:space:page} or {replace-and-render:body=space:page}

(They also have some overlap with the Run macro. See discussion above.)

http://developer.atlassian.com/jira/browse/ZONE-15

Thanks guys, for two essential plugins!

By using the replace-and-render plugin in combination with the html plugin, you're able to create new pages based on form values. The following example shows two dropdown lists on the current page allowing the user to select a month and year. By clicking on the Create Status Report button, a JavaScript is called which redirects the browser to Confluence's "add page" dialog with a predefined title.

{replace-and-render}
	{replace-body} 
		{html}
			<br><select id="cboStatusReportMonth">
				<option></option>
				<option>January</option><option>February</option><option>March</option><option>April</option>
				<option>May</option><option>June</option><option>July</option><option>August</option>
				<option>September</option><option>October</option><option>November</option><option>December</option>
			</select>
			<select id="cboStatusReportYear">
				<option>2006</option><option selected>2007</option><option>2008</option><option>2009</option>
			</select>
			<input type="button" value="Create Status Report" onclick="createStatusReport();">

			<script language="JavaScript">
				function createStatusReport() {
					var spaceKey = "%spaceKey%";
					var fromPageId = "%pageId%";
					var projectName = "%pageTitle%";
					var boilerplate = "%boilerPlate%";
					var monthText = document.getElementById('cboStatusReportMonth').value;
					var yearText = document.getElementById('cboStatusReportYear').value;
					
					if (monthText.length>0 && yearText.length>0) {
						var title = "Status Report for '" + projectName + "' - " + monthText + " " + yearText;
						document.location = "/pages/createfromboilerplate.action?spaceKey=" + escape(spaceKey) + "&linkCreation=true&title=" + escape(title) + "&fromPageId=" + fromPageId + "&parentPageString=" + escape(projectName) + "&boilerplate=" + escape(boilerplate);;
					} else {
						alert("Please select a month and year.");
					}
				}
			</script>
		{html}
  {replace-body}
  {replace-item:%pageId%}{page-info:pageId}{replace-item}
  {replace-item:%pageTitle%}{page-info:title}{replace-item}
  {replace-item:%spaceKey%}PRJ{replace-item}
  {replace-item:%boilerPlate%}StatusReport{replace-item}
{replace-and-render}

There's a known issue with this method: although the title of the new page is specified, Confluence still displays the "add page" dialog with the title text box disabled, leaving the user the only option to either click "Save" to finally create the page - or to cancel the process. This is not very user friendly, but seems to be the only option for the moment.

How do I properly replace a value in report-table generated content? I would like to replace the table's <thead> element with a <tr> element in order to work around a bug of the table-plus macro. The following code does not work. Does replace-and-render first replace, then render the content?

{replace-and-render}
	{replace-item:thead}tr{replace-item}
	{replace-body}
		{report-table}
			{content-reporter:scope=@self > children|types=page|labels=todo}
				{date-sort:data:DueDate}
			{content-reporter}
			{report-column:title=Task}{report-info:data:Task}{report-column}
			{report-column:title=Due Date}{report-info:data:DueDate}{report-column}
		{report-table}
	{replace-body}
{replace-and-render}