I have an application where in I am trying to create a velocity template repository which will help me centralise all my email templates and will allow me to create a communication hub. All templates will be called at runtime and populates with data via services. My problem is that I need to provide users with optional and compulsory params list when they define the template inputs for the velocity template. Is there a way to read the tokens/tags from the velocity template file and extract them?? Like I want a list of tokens $name.address.streetName to be available to me from .vm file. I do not want to go for Regex . I do not have to cache or reuse them , its just going to be a one time read and store the default,compulsory & optional params in the database. I am following these patterns : http://kickjava.com/src/org/apache/velocity/test/view/TemplateNodeView.java.htm How to use String as Velocity Template? Please advice.