Spring MVC and Tiles 2

I still remember how cool it was to use Tiles with Struts, back in Mexico and a couple of times here, but since I've migrated my efforts on Spring MVC;
At the very beginning I couldn't implement Tiles successfully (I just tried 2 times :P - 1 really important and another one just for fun)
But when Tiles became an independent project: Apache Tiles 2 things changed a little bit, and now that everything could be delegated to Spring, let's give it a shot!
I didn't have to change too many things, because let's start from an existing App using Spring MVC, Spring Core, Hibernate, Apache CXF, DisplayTag, jCaptcha, etc.

This is my Application layout (yes! I <3 Maven 2!)
 

This is one of my Controllers (something really common) @Controller public class LandingPageController extends BaseCustomController { private static final Logger log = Logger.getLogger(LandingPageController.class); @Autowired private ICatalogsService catalogsService; @RequestMapping(value = "/showLandingPage.do") public String showInitialPage(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, ModelMap modelMap) { if(!this.isLoggedIn(request)){//Verify if user is authenticated return "redirect:/authentication/notLoggedIn.do"; } log.debug("show initial page / welcome page"); log.debug("Get random products"); List<ProductDTO> list = new ArrayList<ProductDTO>(); Integer max = RandomUtils.JVM_RANDOM.nextInt(GenericConstants.MAX_NUMBER_PRODUCTS); if(max==0){ max = GenericConstants.MIN_NUMBER_PRODUCTS; // } try { list = catalogsService.getRandomProducts(max); modelMap.put(GenericConstants.KEY_LIST_ITEMS, list); } catch (ApplicationException ex) { log.error(ex); modelMap.put(GenericConstants.KEY_FATAL, "ErrorCode "+ex.getErrorCode()+": "+ex.getErrorMessage()); } return "start/landing_page";//show jsp } }
On the return statement return "start/landing_page";//show jsp I'm just displaying the file: /jsp/start/landing_page.jsp
This is my previous webApplicationContext.xml (look at the InternalResourceViewResolver - it maps the JSP's to the return statements on my Controllers) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xmlns:flow="http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow-config" xmlns:p = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow-config http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow-config/spring-webflow-config-2.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd"> <!--================== Annotation config =====================--> <context:annotation-config/> <!--================== Location of Controllers =====================--> <context:component-scan base-package="mx.com.juca.store.web.controller"/> <!--================== InternalResourceViewResolver =====================--> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver"> <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/> <property name="prefix" value="/jsp/"/> <property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/> </bean> </beans>

Let's start by integrating Tiles

Add new dependencies in your pom.xml <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.tiles</groupId> <artifactId>tiles-core</artifactId> <version>2.2.2</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.tiles</groupId> <artifactId>tiles-el</artifactId> <version>2.2.2</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.tiles</groupId> <artifactId>tiles-jsp</artifactId> <version>2.2.2</version> </dependency>
Update your webApplicationContext.xml (don't forget to take out the existing InternalResourceViewResolver - we're going to replace it with a Tiles View Resolver) by adding these entries <!--================== Internationalization of my App =====================--> <!-- Resolves localized messages*.properties file(s) in the application to allow for internationalization --> <bean class="org.springframework.context.support.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource" id="messageSource" p:basenames="WEB-INF/i18n/messages" p:fallbackToSystemLocale="false"/> <!-- Declare the Interceptor --> <mvc:interceptors> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor" p:paramName="locale"/> </mvc:interceptors> <!-- Declare the Resolver --> <bean id="localeResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.SessionLocaleResolver"/> <!--================== Modify dynamically Theme =====================--> <!-- store preferred theme configuration in a cookie --> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.theme.CookieThemeResolver" id="themeResolver" p:cookieName="theme" p:defaultThemeName="standard"/> <!--================== Tiles Integration - View Resolver: replaces previous InternalResourceViewResolver =====================--> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver" id="tilesViewResolver"> <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView"/> </bean> <!--================== Tiles Configuration =====================--> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer" id="tilesConfigurer"> <property name="definitions"> <list> <value>/WEB-INF/conf/layouts/layouts.xml</value> <!-- Scan views directory for Tiles configurations --> <value>/jsp/**/views.xml</value> </list> </property> </bean>
Put more attention to this portion (the rest is a nice to have) <!--================== Tiles Integration - View Resolver: replaces previous InternalResourceViewResolver =====================--> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver" id="tilesViewResolver"> <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView"/> </bean> <!--================== Tiles Configuration =====================--> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer" id="tilesConfigurer"> <property name="definitions"> <list> <value>/WEB-INF/conf/layouts/layouts.xml</value> <!-- Scan views directory for Tiles configurations --> <value>/jsp/**/views.xml</value> </list> </property> </bean>
Then according to this tilesConfigurer, I have to add a new file on each JSP folder (views.xml) and my layouts, like this
 

layouts.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE tiles-definitions PUBLIC "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Tiles Configuration 2.1//EN" "http://tiles.apache.org/dtds/tiles-config_2_1.dtd"> <tiles-definitions> <definition name="default" template="/WEB-INF/conf/layouts/default.jsp"> <put-attribute name="header" value="/WEB-INF/conf/layouts/header.jsp" /> <put-attribute name="menu" value="/WEB-INF/conf/layouts/menu.jsp" /> <put-attribute name="footer" value="/WEB-INF/conf/layouts/footer.jsp" /> </definition> </tiles-definitions>
default.jsp <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c" %> <%@ taglib uri="http://tiles.apache.org/tags-tiles" prefix="tiles" %> <%@ taglib uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form" prefix="form" %> <%@ taglib uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags" prefix="spring" %> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /> <spring:url value="/images/favicon.ico" var="favicon" /> <link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="${favicon}" /> <spring:message code="site.title" var="app_name"/> <title><spring:message code="welcome_h3" arguments="${app_name}" /></title> <link href="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/css/displaytag.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <link href="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/css/estilos.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <link href="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/css/standard.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <script src="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/js/overlib/overlib.js"></script> </head> <body class="tundra spring"> <div id="overDiv" style="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:1000;"></div> <div id="wrapper"> <tiles:insertAttribute name="header" ignore="true" /> <tiles:insertAttribute name="menu" ignore="true" /> <div id="main"> <tiles:insertAttribute name="body"/> <tiles:insertAttribute name="footer" ignore="true"/> </div> </div> </body> </html>
footer.jsp. Look at the links, because this is the key to make this APP Multilanguage (besides the entries on webApplicationContext.xml and obviously the *.properties files)
 
<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %> <%@ taglib prefix="fmt" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/fmt" %> <div align="right"> <div> <fmt:message key="button.locale"/>: <c:url var="englishLocaleUrl" value="${urlBase}"> <c:param name="locale" value="" /> </c:url> <c:url var="spanishLocaleUrl" value="${urlBase}"> <c:param name="locale" value="es" /> </c:url> <a href='<c:out value="${englishLocaleUrl}"/>'><fmt:message key="locale.english"/></a> <a href='<c:out value="${spanishLocaleUrl}"/>'><fmt:message key="locale.spanish"/></a> </div> <div> </div> <div><fmt:message key="site.footer"/></div> </div>
views.xml on /jsp/start/ folder <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?> <!DOCTYPE tiles-definitions PUBLIC "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Tiles Configuration 2.1//EN" "http://tiles.apache.org/dtds/tiles-config_2_1.dtd"> <tiles-definitions> <definition extends="default" name="start/landing_page"> <put-attribute name="body" value="/jsp/start/landing_page.jsp"/> </definition> </tiles-definitions>
This portion makes the magic (
without touching any single line of code!!! ) <definition extends="default" name="start/landing_page">
Where else have you seen "start/landing_page" before? If you don't remember, in my controller (return statement: return "start/landing_page";//show jsp)

And now you're ready to rock!