[Question] Dynamic tag names

[matrei]

Hi, I am looking for a way in JTE to pass in the tag name for a specific HTML element in a template.
In Thymeleaf there is a th:tagName attribute that will replace the defined tag name of an HTML element.

With rootElementName resolving to span:

<div th:tagName="${rootElementName}">Hello World!</div>

will render:

<span>Hello World!</span>

With JTE I tried:

@param String rootElementName
<${rootElementName}>Hello World!</${rootElementName}>

but this fails to compile with the error: Expressions in HTML tag names are not allowed.

[kelunik]

I think this is better suited as an issue than discussions, but let's sort out some details first.

Could you describe the use cases where this would be useful?

[matrei]

Oh, sorry if I'm in the wrong forum.

Here are some use cases:

Configurable Tag Names:
Render different tags based on application configuration.
<div th:tagName="${config.myTagName}"></div>

Dynamic Tag Generation:
Generate tags dynamically based on data values (for example in a loop).
<div th:each="item : ${items}" th:tagName="${item.tag}"></div>

[edward3h]

What is the end goal of changing tag names? Could you achieve the effect you want a different way? For example, <div> with a class= set?

[matrei]

The end goal is to be have flexible control over the generated markup.

Sure, for some use cases, CSS could be a workaround. For example if it is sufficient to change the display property.

Coming from Thymeleaf, I could not find a way to accomplish the same thing in JTE, and hence my question.
I understand if it's not possible at the moment, I just wanted to check as I could not find a solution on my own.

[casid]

Just a thought about your original post:

<div th:tagName="${condition ? 'a' : 'span'}"></div>

The idiomatic jte way would be instead:

@if(condition)
  <a></a>
@else
  <span></span>
@endif

Now you get nice HTML completions from your IDE, for instance you probably need a href in the first case that you do not need (or would even be invalid HTML) in the second case.

[matrei]

Yes! That was a bad example that is better solved the way you show. 👍