Question

Here’s my testMacro.txt

<#macro myMacro value1 value2>
<#list 1..value1 as x>
 <#if x=value1>
      <#switch value2>
           <#case value2 = 1>
                CASE1    
           <#break>
           <#case value2 =2 >
                CASE2   
           <#break>
           <#case value2 = 3>
                CASE3    
           <#break>
      </#switch>
 <#else>
             ELSE
 </#if>
</#list>

<@myMacro value1=3 value2=1 />

Here is the Exception that I am getting.

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException: freemarker.template.TemplateException: The only legal comparisons are between two numbers, two strings, or two dates.
Left hand operand is a freemarker.template.SimpleNumber
Right hand operand is a freemarker.template.TemplateBooleanModel$2

Now this is in the switch case statement, though line number is not given in the exception, but I commented the switch statement and there was no exception, hence I am concluding that its some problem with the case statement.

Kindly help.

Answer 1

For historical reasons = is an alias of ==, except on places where an assignment is expected. So '<#case value2 = 1>' is '<#case value2 == 1>', and thus it ends up being '<#case true>' or '<#case false>', hence the error message. So as you have figured, it should be '<#case 1>' and such, just like in C-ish languages. As of the last example in the Manual, that example is wrong…