The VelocityTools developers are pleased to announce the release of VelocityTools 1.4.

There have been many important bug fixes since the 1.3 release and a handful of new features. While important, the overall slate of changes is small compared to previous releases due to the rapid progress of the upcoming 2.0 version. This is expected to be the last release of the 1.x series, as 2.0 is both superior and backwards compatible.

New features in VelocityTools 1.4 include more configurability for NumberTool and DateTool, the new ComparisonDateTool, and new abilities for EscapeTool and LinkTool. For a full listing of new features and bug fixes please see the change log.

This section describes changes after the 1.3 release.

• Added ability to add current request parameters to LinkTool, including controls for automatically and/or manually ignoring some of those. Thanks to Christopher Schultz. (ndb)
• VELTOOLS-87: fixed infinite recursion in RenderTool. Thanks to Andrea Bernardo Ciddio. (ndb)
• Upgraded DVSL version used for documentation to v1.0 (ndb)
• VELTOOLS-85: Fix order preservation problem in SortTool. Thanks to Tatyana. (ndb)
• Protect BrowserSniffer from requests without user-agent. (cb)
• Added support for a MethodExceptionHandler - the TilesTool.get() method now only returns null if one isn't present. (maj)
• Changed StrutsLinkTool.setForward() to look for forwards local to the action mapping, before looking up global forwards. Thanks to Christopher Schultz. (ndb)
• Rearrange/refactor/deprecate some internal methods in VelocityViewServlet in preparation for VelocityTools 2.0 upgrades. (ndb)
• Upgraded Velocity Engine dependency to build and test against v1.5. (NOTE: Velocity Engine 1.5 will be required for VelocityTools 2.0.) (ndb)
• Added propertyKey() and propertyValue() escaping support to EscapeTool (VELTOOLS-81). Thanks to Phil Cornelius for this patch. (ndb)
• Fixed bug in request-path restriction when using wildcards. (ndb)
• Make default locale and format for NumberTool configurable, just as they are in DateTool. (ndb)
• Add ComparisonDateTool (with some tests and showcase demos) for comparing dates and displaying the comparisons textually. Thanks to Chris Townsen for the initial implementation. (ndb)
• Add ability to configure default Locale for DateTool and to lock down configure() so it is safe to use in application scope. (ndb)
• Add better support for dynamic locales in MessageTool. Thanks to Christopher Schultz. (ndb)
• Use ResourceTool for common text throughout the Showcase example. (ndb)