Template variables allows you to define variables that can be configured on confluence page while configuring the Macro.

Use case

Imagine you have a Confluence page, and you want to embed different YouTube videos on that page. You have two ways to do this:

1. Creating Multiple Templates: You could create separate templates for each YouTube video you want to embed. Each template would contain the specific URL of the YouTube video. However, this is not recommended because it can become messy and difficult to manage when you have many videos to embed.
2. Creating a Single Template with a URL Variable: The better approach is to create a single template that can be used for all YouTube videos. This template will have a special kind of variable called a "url" Instead of hardcoding the YouTube video URL in the template, you create a variable placeholder like {url} in the template. This variable can be configured via the Confluence Html Template Macro.

Using a single template with a URL variable makes it easy to manage and update the embedded YouTube videos across your Confluence pages without creating a mess of multiple templates.

Defining the variables

1. Create a new template or open an existing one, then go to Variable section
2. Configure the variable as follows

Variable Name: Alphanumeric separated by _ and description.

Default Value: Default value for the variable which will be used when not configured in the Macro

Mandatory: Weather it is mandatory to configured in Macro. If mandatory variable is not configured than you will see and error in the Macro.

Default: A default variable means there will be only one variable, and the value entered in the variable text box in Macro config will be directly assigned to it. This is very useful when you have only one variable or when you want to parse variable configurations using your own logic, as having more than one variable would require defining URL query parameters.

In the above screenshot, we have defined a URL variable, which is the default option. Therefore, while configuring, we can directly pass the URL of the YouTube video in the variable, instead of writing it like "url=**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4AYnTZC83I**."

In a nutshell, having a default variable makes things easier to manage and allows you to do cool things with the value you put in the variable box!

Using the variables