Apache Tiles is a popular and mostly used templating framework for java based web application. Tiles became more popular because Struts 1.x uses Tiles as its default templating framework. SpringMVC which is an MVC framework, like Struts, also supports integration of Tiles as its templating framework.
Let us see how we can integrate SpringMVC and Tiles.
You can download Tiles binaries from here
Step#1: Add the following tiles jars to WEB-INF/lib folder.
- tiles-api-2.2.2.jar
- tiles-core-2.2.2.jar
- tiles-jsp-2.2.2.jar
- tiles-servlet-2.2.2.jar
- tiles-template-2.2.2.jar
Step#2: Configure tiles integration in WEB-INF/dispatcher-servlet.xml
<beans> <bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer"> <property name="definitions"> <list> <value>/WEB-INF/tiles.xml</value> </list> </property> </bean> <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver"> <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView"/> </bean> </beans>
Step#3: Configure tiles definitions in WEB-INF/tiles.xml
<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?--> <tiles-definitions> <definition name="baseLayout" template="/jsp/layout/layout.jsp"> <put-attribute name="title" value="SivaLabs" /> <put-attribute name="header" value="/jsp/layout/header.jsp" /> <put-attribute name="navigation" value="/jsp/layout/navigation.jsp" /> <put-attribute name="body" value="" /> <put-attribute name="footer" value="/jsp/layout/footer.jsp" /> </definition> <definition name="login" extends="baseLayout"> <put-attribute name="title" value="SivaLabs : Login" /> <put-attribute name="navigation" value="" /> <put-attribute name="body" value="/jsp/login.jsp" /> </definition> <definition name="welcome" extends="baseLayout"> <put-attribute name="title" value="SivaLabs : Welcome" /> <put-attribute name="body" value="/jsp/welcome.jsp" /> </definition> </tiles-definitions>
Step#4: Code the layout JSPs
layout.jsp
<%@ taglib uri="http://tiles.apache.org/tags-tiles" prefix="tiles"%> <html> <head> <title><tiles:insertAttribute name="title" ignore="true" /></title> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/sivalabs.js"></script> </head> <body> <table border="1" style="border-collapse: collapse;" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" align="center" width="800"> <tbody><tr> <td height="30" colspan="2"><tiles:insertAttribute name="header" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="150" height="450" valign="top"> <tiles:insertAttribute name="navigation" /> </td> <td valign="top" width="650"> <tiles:insertAttribute name="body" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td height="30" colspan="2"> <tiles:insertAttribute name="footer" /> </td> </tr> </tbody></table></body> </html>
header.jsp
<h2>SivaLabs : My Experiments On Technology</h2>
footer.jsp
<center> <b>© 2011 SivaLabs All Rights Reserved</b> </center>
navigation.jsp
<p><a href="createUser.do">Create User</a></p><p><a href="listUsers.do">View Users</a></p><p><a href="logout.do">Logout</a></p>
welcome.jsp
<h2>Welcome to SpringMVC+Tiles Sample Application </h2>
Step#5:
WelcomeController.java
package com.sivalabs.web.controllers;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
@Controller
public class WelcomeController
{
@RequestMapping("welcome")
public String welcome()
{
return "welcome";
}
}
Here the String “welcome” will be resolved as a tile name and display the UI as per “welcome” tile configuration.
Reference: SpringMVC 3 + Tiles 2.2.2 Integration from our JCG partner K. Siva at the My Experiments on Technology
Happy coding
Byron
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Caused by: org.apache.tiles.definition.DefinitionsFactoryException: Cannot load definition URLs
at org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer$SpringTilesContainerFactory.getSourceURLs(TilesConfigurer.java:428)
at org.apache.tiles.factory.BasicTilesContainerFactory.createLocaleDefinitionDao(BasicTilesContainerFactory.java:298)
at org.apache.tiles.factory.BasicTilesContainerFactory.createDefinitionsFactory(BasicTilesContainerFactory.java:242)
at org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer$SpringTilesContainerFactory.createDefinitionsFactory(TilesConfigurer.java:481)
at org.apache.tiles.factory.BasicTilesContainerFactory.createContainer(BasicTilesContainerFactory.java:104)
at org.apache.tiles.startup.AbstractTilesInitializer.createContainer(AbstractTilesInitializer.java:124)
at org.apache.tiles.startup.AbstractTilesInitializer.initialize(AbstractTilesInitializer.java:70)
at org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer.afterPropertiesSet(TilesConfigurer.java:339)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.invokeInitMethods(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1514)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1452)
… 22 more
Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: ServletContext resource [/
/WEB-INF/tiles.xml
] cannot be resolved to URL because it does not exist
at org.springframework.web.context.support.ServletContextResource.getURL(ServletContextResource.java:154)
at org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.SpringTilesApplicationContextFactory$SpringWildcardServletTilesApplicationContext.getResources(SpringTilesApplicationContextFactory.java:105)
at org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer$SpringTilesContainerFactory.getSourceURLs(TilesConfigurer.java:423)
… 31 more
Can someone help… am getting the exception above..
crosscheck location and name of tiles file
Hi all! Thanks for the post. It is works for me very well. But How can I display dynamic data in a head/footer? For example I would like to display the user’s unread message number, and some information whick come from the database in the Head tile? It is a bad design that assign in every controller this information, because in every controller I must do that, and this is not manageable! Is there any way for the ReversePresenter Pattern (Like in GoogleWebToolkit – every view known there own presenter, and can ask data from it)? Or how other way… Read more »
For those getting the above exception regarding tile factory, pls. see if my tutorial on spring 3 mvc and tiles works for you.
In step#3 i found that i had to add this tag
Please help me out with this error
HTTP Status 404 –
type Status report
message
description The requested resource () is not available.
Apache Tomcat/6.0.32
Wait… Do you have to add a definition in tiles.xml for EVERY page there is?!
i have a probleme with tiles
org.apache.tiles.jsp.taglib.NoSuchAttributeException: Attribute ‘header’ not found.
i put the same configuration
plz help !!!!
Thanks Shiva.
It worked for me only after I commented out following part