API / Apache FreeMarker Interview questions

How does FreeMarker's auto-escaping work?

Auto-escaping automatically encodes values inserted through ${...} so that untrusted or unescaped data cannot break out of the surrounding markup - for example escaping < and & in HTML output. It is controlled per template by the output_format and auto_esc settings, typically declared at the top of the file:

<#ftl output_format="HTML">
<p>${comment.text}</p>   <#-- automatically HTML-escaped -->

When auto-escaping is on, a value that is already known to be safe markup of that output format - such as the result of another FreeMarker call that also declares output_format="HTML" - is not double-escaped. The ?no_esc built-in can force a specific value to bypass escaping when it is deliberately trusted markup. This mechanism replaced the older, template-wide <#escape x as x?html> approach, which had to be applied manually and consistently by every template author.

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What two settings control whether a template auto-escapes interpolated values?output_format and auto_esc

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strict_syntax and whitespace_stripping

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locale and time_zone

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template_update_delay and localized_lookup

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Which built-in explicitly marks a value as safe to bypass auto-escaping??raw

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?trim

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?no_esc

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?keep_html

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What is the purpose of interpolation (${...}) in FreeMarker? List the comparison operators supported in FreeMarker? What are the main use cases of FreeMarker? What are the types in FreeMarker's data model? How do you use the #assign directive? Describe the built-ins available in FreeMarker? How do you access static Java members (static methods, fields, and enum constants) from a FreeMarker template? What is Apache FreeMarker? What is the purpose of the FreeMarker Configuration object? What is the difference between FreeMarker's #switch/#case and a chain of #if/#elseif directives? What is the purpose of the <#if> directive? What are the types of loops available in FreeMarker? What is the difference between #assign and #local? How do you apply default values for missing variables in FreeMarker? Why doesn't FreeMarker allow templates unrestricted access to Java reflection and side-effecting method calls? What is the purpose of the incompatible_improvements setting? Define directive in FreeMarker? Which is generally the better choice for a new project today, FreeMarker or Velocity, and why? What is a FreeMarker template? What is the purpose of the #include directive?

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