Syntax and Literals

This is an overview of the syntax you need to be familiar with to use the template directives; alongside explanations of what the different kinds of literals available are and how they look.

On this page:

Syntax

When writing your code you must make sure that you are using the right syntax otherwise you may create a parse error, this will lead to your campaign overview showing a red stop sign, signifying that there is a problem.

Tags

Code will need to put within the character sequences [* ... *]; this is to separate the code from text or HTML. You can either use this syntax on every line or over many by ensuring there is a ; at the end of each line, so that the code knows the line has ended.

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[* darwin_quote = "I love fool's experiments, I am always making them." *]
[* darwin_quote.upper *]

Output: I LOVE FOOL'S EXPERIMENTS, I AM ALWAYS MAKING THEM.

OR 

[* darwin_quote = "I love fool's experiments, I am always making them.";
darwin_quote.upper;
*]

Code Blocks

When you do something within your code, such as an IF statement or FOREACH loop, you must end it. To do this you include [* END *] on the last line of your Code Block (or END; *] if you're going over multiple lines). If you don't do this you will create a parse error and your campaign will not show in the overview.

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[* darwin_quote = "I love fool's experiments, I am always making them." *]
[* darwin_array = darwin_quote.split(', ') *]
  [* FOREACH line IN darwin_array *]
    [* line *]
  [* END *]

Output:

I love fool's experiments

I am always making them.

| html

When writing your code it is best practice to add the filter | html at the end; this is because it changes <, >, & and " to &lt;, &gt; ,&amp; and &quot;, which will protect your code from being interpreted as html tags.

Comments

You can apply a comment to a line by using a hash #. This denotes the whole line as a comment and will not be read as code.

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[* darwin_quote = "I love fool's experiments, I am always making them.";
# this is a quote from Charles Darwin;
darwin_quote;
*]

Output: I love fool's experiments, I am always making them.

Literals

Literals make up what your variables are, they are the content that you do stuff to.

Strings

String literals are denoted by ' ' and need to encase letters. When you GET this string it will output whatever it is set to.

For example:

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[* my_string = 'this is an example string';
my_string; 
*]

Output: this is an example string.

Escaping

Escaping allows you to use certain characters that, without escaping, have a certain function. For example, escaping quotation marks within a string will prevent the code from thinking there are two strings, separated by unreadable text. To escape something all you do is put a \ before it, for example: 

[* my_string = 'Shakespeare wrote \"What is the city but the people?\" in one of his plays' *]

Digits

Numbers don't need quotation marks, they are understood to be numbers when they are written: [* my_number = 4 *]

However, if you have digits that aren't a number (like binary or a pin code) you will need to place these in a string so that they aren't treated as a mathematical symbol.

For example: 

[* phone_number = '07700 456 789' *]

Arrays

Arrays are lists of data, they are able to hold multiple values which you can search through using certain loops or conditions which are described later. 

[* my_array = ['Wordsworth', 'Coleridge', 'Milton', 'Pope'] *]

Hashes

Hashes allow you to create data which has keys and values. This in turn allows you to search through the values for the key results or a key result for its value. They are contained within braces and use = to set the value. 

[* my_hash = { 'Batman' = 'The Joker', 'Professor X' = 'Magneto', 'Daredevil' = 'Kingpin' } *]