Documentation on "scripting"-type instructions used in confluence

[Chris Severn]

In some online examples of formatting etc, I see that there is some sort of language which can be used inside confluence pages (inside the layout pages at least).

For example, on this page:
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Adding+a+Navigation+Sidebar
it has commands like:
#if($action.isPrintableVersion() == false)
#includePage($helper.spaceKey "TreeNavigation")
$body
#else

I haven't been able to find the documentation for all the available scripting commands like these, or for the member functions provided by "$action" for example.

Can I used these sort of commands in any page, or only on page layout boxes? Can I use them in the sidebar code in the documentation theme?

Is there a command to get the current page title being shown, so I can check which page I'm on, and show a different sidebar for various pages? Or, even better, for the sidebar code to retrieve some variable which is defined on the current page, and to choose what to display based on that ?

Thanks for pointing me towards any documentation for this.

[Sander Brienen [Avisi] · Accepted solution]

The "scripting" code you see are Velocity macros. Confluence uses Apache Velocity as their templating engine. These macros can only be used in Velocity template files and not in normal Confluence wiki pages.

See here for more information: https://developer.atlassian.com/display/CONFDEV/Velocity+Template+Overview

And here for the Velocity project page: http://velocity.apache.org

[Chris Severn]

Thanks Sander. I'd seen a few mentions of Velocity previously, but never really found the main page that gives the basics of what it is, and how it's used in Confluence.