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-- import: lib

-- lib.h1: Hello World

-- import: lib

-- lib.h1: Hello World

Here is a FTD document that is importing a library, lib, and has a heading of level 1, “Hello World”. FTD language is designed for human beings, not just programmers, we have taken precautions like not requiring quoting for strings, not relying on indentation nor on braces that most programming languages require. It is not verbose like HTML, and not simplistic like Markdown.

FTD can be compared with Markdown, but in FTD you can do the following for example:

-- boolean $current: true

-- ftd.text: Hello World!
align: center
$on-click$: toggle $current
padding: 20
text-align: center
color if { current } : $inherited.colors.cta-primary.base
color: $inherited.colors.cta-primary.text
background-color: $inherited.colors.text

-- boolean $current: true

-- ftd.text: Hello World!
align: center
$on-click$: toggle $current
padding: 20
text-align: center
color if { current } : $inherited.colors.cta-primary.base
color: $inherited.colors.cta-primary.text
background-color: $inherited.colors.text

We can define variables in FTD. FTD is strongly typed. We can do event handling. Since we are targeting “human beings” we have created a lot of “actions” that we believe one will be invoking on a day to day basis, like toggle, which can be used to create simple event handling.

You can also abstract out the logic in a custom ftd component, eg:

-- ftd.text toggle-text: $title
boolean $current: false
caption title:
$on-click$: toggle $current
text-align: center
color if { current }: $inherited.colors.cta-primary.base
color: $inherited.colors.cta-primary.text
background-color: $inherited.colors.text
padding: 20

-- toggle-text: FTD is cool!

-- ftd.text toggle-text: $title
boolean $current: false
caption title:
$on-click$: toggle $current
text-align: center
color if { current }: $inherited.colors.cta-primary.base
color: $inherited.colors.cta-primary.text
background-color: $inherited.colors.text
padding: 20

-- toggle-text: FTD is cool!

Here we have created a new component called toggle-text, and then instantiated it instead. This way we can create custom component library and use them in our writing without “polluting” the prose with noise.

FTD is also a good first class data language. You can define and use records:

-- record person:
caption name:
string location:
optional body bio:

-- record person:
caption name:
string location:
optional body bio:

Each field has a type. caption is an alias for string, and tells ftd that the value can come in the “caption” position, after the : of the “section line”, eg lines that start with -- or ---. If a field is optional, it must be marked as such.

-- person amitu: Amit Upadhyay
location: Bangalore, India

Amit is the founder and CEO of FifthTry.

He loves to code, and is pursuing his childhood goal of
becoming a professional starer of the trees.

-- person amitu: Amit Upadhyay
location: Bangalore, India

Amit is the founder and CEO of FifthTry.

He loves to code, and is pursuing his childhood goal of
becoming a professional starer of the trees.

Here we have defined a variable amitu. You can also define a list:

-- person list employees:

-- person: Sourabh Garg
location: Ranchi, India

-- person: Arpita Jaiswal
location: Lucknow, India

Arpita is the primary author of FTD language.

-- end: employees

-- person list employees:

-- person: Sourabh Garg
location: Ranchi, India

-- person: Arpita Jaiswal
location: Lucknow, India

Arpita is the primary author of FTD language.

-- end: employees

We can then create a component that can render such record and loop over a list to show all members of the list:

-- render-person:
person: $p
$loop$: $employees as $p

-- render-person:
person: $p
$loop$: $employees as $p

This way we can have clean separation of data from presentation. The data defined in FTD documents can be easily read from say Rust:

#[derive(serde::Deserialize)]
struct Employee {
    name: String,
    location: String,
    bio: Option<String>
}

let doc = ftd::p2::Document::from("some/id", source, lib)?;
let amitu: Employee = doc.get("amitu")?;
let employees: Vec<Employee> = doc.get("employees")?;

#[derive(serde::Deserialize)]
struct Employee {
    name: String,
    location: String,
    bio: Option<String>
}

let doc = ftd::p2::Document::from("some/id", source, lib)?;
let amitu: Employee = doc.get("amitu")?;
let employees: Vec<Employee> = doc.get("employees")?;

Data defined in FTD are first class data. Instead of sharing CSV/JSON files you can chose to share FTD files. Unlike CSV/JSON data in FTD are type checked. And unlike them you actually get a proper presentation of data, the FTD file can contain the definition of component that can render the data that you can view in your browser.

FTD can also be used as a configuration language.

Home

ftd Hello World!

-- import: lib

-- lib.h1: Hello World

-- import: lib

-- lib.h1: Hello World

Data Modelling in ftd

-- record person:
caption name:
string location:
optional body bio:

-- record person:
caption name:
string location:
optional body bio:

Creating a variable

-- person amitu: Amit Upadhyay
location: Bangalore, India

Amit is the founder and CEO of FifthTry.

He loves to code, and is pursuing his childhood goal of
becoming a professional starer of the trees.

-- person amitu: Amit Upadhyay
location: Bangalore, India

Amit is the founder and CEO of FifthTry.

He loves to code, and is pursuing his childhood goal of
becoming a professional starer of the trees.

Creating a list

-- person list employees:

-- person: Sourabh Garg
location: Ranchi, India

-- person: Arpita Jaiswal
location: Lucknow, India

Arpita is the primary author of FTD language.

-- end: employees

-- person list employees:

-- person: Sourabh Garg
location: Ranchi, India

-- person: Arpita Jaiswal
location: Lucknow, India

Arpita is the primary author of FTD language.

-- end: employees

Looping over a list

-- render-person:
person: $p
$loop$: $employees as $p

-- render-person:
person: $p
$loop$: $employees as $p

Reading Data from ftd files

#[derive(serde::Deserialize)]
struct Employee {
    name: String,
    location: String,
    bio: Option<String>
}

let doc = ftd::p2::Document::from("some/id", source, lib)?;
let amitu: Employee = doc.get("amitu")?;
let employees: Vec<Employee> = doc.get("employees")?;

#[derive(serde::Deserialize)]
struct Employee {
    name: String,
    location: String,
    bio: Option<String>
}

let doc = ftd::p2::Document::from("some/id", source, lib)?;
let amitu: Employee = doc.get("amitu")?;
let employees: Vec<Employee> = doc.get("employees")?;