<p>I have a Freemarker template which contains a bunch of placeholders for which values are supplied when the template is processed. I want to conditionally include part of the template if the userName variable is supplied, something like:</p>

<pre><code>[#if_exists userName]
  Hi ${userName}, How are you?
[/#if_exists]
</code></pre>

<p>However, the FreeMarker manual seems to indicate that if_exists is deprecated, but I can't find another way to achieve this. Of course, I could simple providing an additional boolean variable isUserName and use that like this:</p>

<pre><code>[#if isUserName]
  Hi ${userName}, How are you?
[/#if]
</code></pre>

<p>But if there's a way of checking whether userName exists then I can avoid adding this extra variable.</p>

To check if the value exists:
```
```
[#if userName??]
   Hi ${userName}, How are you?
[/#if]
```
```
Or with the standard freemarker syntax:
```
```
<#if userName??>
   Hi ${userName}, How are you?
</#if>
```
```
To check if the value exists and is not empty:
```
```
<#if userName?has_content>
    Hi ${userName}, How are you?
</#if>
```
```