public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { /* You should do this ONLY ONCE in the whole application life-cycle: */ /* Create and adjust the configuration singleton */ Configuration cfg = new Configuration(Configuration.VERSION_2_3_22); cfg.setDirectoryForTemplateLoading(new File("/Users/ian.goldsmith/projects/freemarker")); cfg.setDefaultEncoding("UTF-8"); cfg.setTemplateExceptionHandler(TemplateExceptionHandler.RETHROW_HANDLER); /* * You usually do these for MULTIPLE TIMES in the application * life-cycle: */ /* Create a data-model */ Map message = new HashMap(); message.put( "contentAsXml", freemarker.ext.dom.NodeModel.parse( new File("/Users/ian.goldsmith/projects/freemarker/test.xml"))); Map root = new HashMap(); root.put("message", message); /* Get the template (uses cache internally) */ Template temp = cfg.getTemplate("testxml.ftl"); /* Merge data-model with template */ Writer out = new OutputStreamWriter(System.out); temp.process(root, out); // Note: Depending on what `out` is, you may need to call `out.close()`. // This is usually the case for file output, but not for servlet output. }