Telligent 10 Velocity Template Language Version

We have our own custom version of Velocity that we use.

I ran into an issue (developing (in a .vm file) a generally simple date function) that cost me nearly ...three hours... because I didn't initially find Telligent documentation for this particular issue and none of the typical/common resources for development issues for a language (e.g., StackOverflow, etc.) provided responses that worked as those resources were providing answers the actual* Velocity Template Language.

Per your response, which sheds very little light on what coding languages are apparently merged (Velocity (and no indication as to which version or non-Telligent derived supporting documentation), .NET, more...?)  into the current Telligent Widget Studio I believe its accurate to say that if we (developers that are new to Telligent/JAVA/Velocity/etc.) will need to rely solely on documentation provided under the `community.telligent.com` domain? Or are there other resources available?

For example per my research a lot of Velocity development is done using "Velocity Tools" and after working in Telligent now for the couple of weeks I haven't seen any mention of this apparently useful and common tool-set for Velocity's inclusion or exclusion in Telligent (I can ask that question in another thread) which is simply one example of a few time-consuming head-scratchers caused by not isolating languages to versions, not a rant and I'm not knocking your team in any way I am however looking for the best resources for accessing what seems to be common utility functions that aren't included in the Telligent Utility documentation page(s) and are somehow a cross between Velocity and .NET. Thanks Brian

So one thing that should be clarified, we use a derivative of NVelocity, a .NET port of Velocity, so you can't really use Velocity documents as a basis anyway.

As for documentation, this an surrounding documentation is what we consider supported and functional in our widget studio:

community.telligent.com/.../using-velocity-in-widgets

NVelocity... I'll look for NVelocity supporting documentation, thank you, very helpful.

You should stick with the link I shared with you, we use a custom version geared towards our platform so only our documented usages should be considered supported.

Would have liked to have stuck to that but there's no mention of how to simply get the current date in that documentation. I had to find the answer by perusing existing Telligent Widgets and got lucky.

Getting the current date is done through our Widget API, which is documented here:

https://community.telligent.com/community/10/w/api-documentation/60114/widget-api-documentation

I looked all through that page... and rely on it consistently in my development but I still can't find any reference to date or datetime. I've just looked again (thoroughly, I believe), so I have to ask, could you please point out where on that page is it located?

As I mentioned in my first reply to you "...I didn't initially find Telligent Documentation...". I did find the answer in your documentation after* finding it in the code (after finding no results searching first your site (via search input) then no Telligent specific results searching the web). However, I didn't find documentation for this in the page you just linked to I found it here, https://community.telligent.com/community/9/w/api-documentation/51036/core-v2-utility-widget-extension ...in your core-v2utility-widget documentation. 

Which I'm embarrassed to say that I had seen that document and actually saw "CurrentDate" as a parameter but mistakenly went right by due to the fact that it is a "parameter" and I (in a moment of brain-farty-madness) thought it was asking me to pass the CurrentDate to a function (not get* the CurrentDate). After finding `#set ($currentDate = $core_v2_utility.CurrentDate)` in an existing widtget's code I went back to that page and completed a healthy forehead-slap.

I looked all through that page... and rely on it consistently in my development but I still can't find any reference to date or datetime. I've just looked again (thoroughly, I believe), so I have to ask, could you please point out where on that page is it located?

As I mentioned in my first reply to you "...I didn't initially find Telligent Documentation...". I did find the answer in your documentation after* finding it in the code (after finding no results searching first your site (via search input) then no Telligent specific results searching the web). However, I didn't find documentation for this in the page you just linked to I found it here, https://community.telligent.com/community/9/w/api-documentation/51036/core-v2-utility-widget-extension ...in your core-v2utility-widget documentation. 

Which I'm embarrassed to say that I had seen that document and actually saw "CurrentDate" as a parameter but mistakenly went right by due to the fact that it is a "parameter" and I (in a moment of brain-farty-madness) thought it was asking me to pass the CurrentDate to a function (not get* the CurrentDate). After finding `#set ($currentDate = $core_v2_utility.CurrentDate)` in an existing widtget's code I went back to that page and completed a healthy forehead-slap.

My link was not to the specific $core_v2_utility page which has the .CurrentDate parameter, but more generically to the entire Widget Api document.  Using our search on this page and typing "CurrentDate" would have returned the property as the first result.

Agreed, and thank you. The ambiguity came from the terminology of `CurrentDate` on that first results page saying it was a "parameter" which is confused with an "argument" (e.g., if you go to the documentation page for  ...forum.List("%{...PARAMETERS LISTED IN THE DOC GO HERE...}) so when I saw `CurrentDate` as a parameter, again... I went right by it assuming that was a function parameter and not that it would return the CurrentDate. 
This error is completely on me for not slowing down and testing that and simply being new to this framework and documentation. But end the rabbit-trail and to get back to my initial post and reply I'll again say that the ambiguity in stating both in your documentation and answer to my question that Telligent uses a custom version of multiple languages/frameworks means we need to really only rely on the documentation you provide. I have no qualm with that but to my chagrin I did waste quite a bit of time researching and testing Velocity through "normal" channels (e.g., StackOverflow and actual Velocity scripting resources) which I will not do going forward.

Thanks for all of your time on this, we're good.