ability to use non existing properties in (FI) templates about mapserver

[geographika]

This seems a useful enhancement to me. From https://mapserver.org/mapfile/template.html#general

nullformat = String to output if the attribute value is NULL, empty or doesn’t match the pattern (if defined). If not set and any of these conditions occur the item tag is replaced with an empty string.

So nullformat is already used for a couple of cases - both NULL values and values that don't meet a regex, so could be expanded to missing fields. The downside would be possibly breaking backwards compatibility with current templates - although as noted in this issue if a field is missing the template would be throwing an error.

[geographika]

Implemented with #7017 and docs at MapServer/MapServer-documentation#873

[sdlime]

This seems a useful enhancement to me. From https://mapserver.org/mapfile/template.html#general

nullformat = String to output if the attribute value is NULL, empty or doesn’t match the pattern (if defined). If not set and any of these conditions occur the item tag is replaced with an empty string.

So nullformat is already used for a couple of cases - both NULL values and values that don't meet a regex, so could be expanded to missing fields. The downside would be possibly breaking backwards compatibility with current templates - although as noted in this issue if a field is missing the template would be throwing an error.

Perhaps setting an item-level attribute to ignore a missing item - potentially paired with the nullformat - would be a way to avoid backwards compatibility issues.

[geographika]

Perhaps setting an item-level attribute to ignore a missing item - potentially paired with the nullformat - would be a way to avoid backwards compatibility issues.

@sdlime - sounds good to me. What about an ignoremissing property, which can take a "true" value, to ignore missing fields, and if the field is missing it populates the template with the nullformat value e.g.

<!-- MapServer Template -->
Band 1: [value_0]<br/>
[item name="value_1" format="Band 2: $value" nullformat="" ignoremissing="true"]<br/>

[sdlime]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I can't think of a more concise name...