BeansBinding ELProperty as simple template engine
I just read an article about using adding EL support on your projects and I was looking for a nice alternative to Velocity anyways.
I know EL basics from BeansBinding, which I use in most of my UI projects. EL itself looks pretty interesting, but, well, sort of complicated. Even finding the proper jar files seems to be a problem, or at least “another of life’s obscure mysteries” and using EL for a simple search and replace example implies implementing some internals. I was looking for something that I can just use.
Luckily, the first comment mentions the ELProperty class from BeansBinding, and that jar is just a few mouse clicks away, so I thought I give it a try…and…well…it works 
public static void main(String[] args) {
Person mom = new Person("Ann", null);
Person son = new Person("Dave", mom);
Dog dog = new Dog("Foxy");
ELProperty el = ELProperty
.create("${name}'s mom is ${mother.name}");
System.out.println(el.getValue(son));
ELProperty mapEL = ELProperty
.create("${mother.name}'s dog is ${dog.name}");
Map map = new HashMap();
map.put("mother", mom);
map.put("dog", dog);
System.out.println(mapEL.getValue(map));
}ELProperty.create() creates a new instance from a template string. You can fill the template with values using getValue() method. This one takes either an Object with proper getter methods or a Map to resolve variables. And this is the result of the simple example:
Dave's mom is Ann
Ann's dog is FoxyFull Sample Code ( You need the beansbinding jar in the classpath)
Thanks, it is very understandable for beginners