In this tutorial we will discuss about the tiles and build a simple SpringMVC application that utilizes templates using the Apache Tile 3 framework. Now we will create a template version of our pages, and compare it with non-template versions of the same pages. We will split the content, style, and template of these pages logically.
What is Apache Tiles 3.0.1?
Apache Tiles is a templating framework built to simplify the development of web application user interfaces.
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. Spring3MVC which is an MVC framework, like Struts, also supports integration of Tiles as its templating framework.
Tiles allows developer to define page fragments(or parts) which can be assembled into a complete page at run-time. These fragments, or tiles, can be used as simple includes in order to reduce the duplication of common page elements or embedded within other tiles to develop a series of reusable templates. These templates streamline the development of a consistent look and feel across an entire application.
Let us see how we can integrate Spring3MVC and Tiles.
You can download Tiles binaries from here
A web portal have many reusable templates like header, footer, menu etc. These elements remains same in every web page to give a uniform feel and look to improve presentation of portal. But difficult part is when you need to alter these common items.
The Tiles framework solve this problem by using templatization mechanism. We create a common Header, Footer, Menu page and include this in each page. A common layout of website is defined in a central configuration file and this layout can be extended across all the web pages of the web application.
Add the following required tiles jars to WEB-INF/lib folder.
In the previous chapter we run an application of CRUD operation on the Employee table using Spring3MVC and Hibernate3. Now same we will build same application using tiles configuration (or Tiles View Resolver) as view in stead of JstlView (or JSP View resolver).
Updated view of our application with using the tiles configuration look like as below diagram.
Application Structure:
EmployeeBean.java
Employee.java
EmployeeDao.java
EmployeeDaoImpl.java
EmployeeService.java
EmployeeServiceImpl.java
EmployeeController.java
Spring Web configuration file web.xml
<web-app version="2.5" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xsi:schemalocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">
<servlet>
<servlet-name>sdnext</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name><param-value>/WEB-INF/config/sdnext-servlet.xml</param-value></init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>sdnext</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
</web-app>
Spring Web configuration file sdnext-servlet.xml
<beans xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xsi:schemalocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-3.0.xsd">
<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:resources/database.properties">
</context:property-placeholder>
<context:component-scan base-package="com.dineshonjava">
</context:component-scan>
<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="hibernateTransactionManager">
</tx:annotation-driven>
<!-- <bean id="jspViewResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass"
value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"></property>
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/"></property>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"></property>
</bean> -->
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver" id="viewResolver">
<property name="viewClass">
<value>
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView
</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer" id="tilesConfigurer">
<property name="definitions">
<list>
<value>/WEB-INF/config/tiles.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource" id="dataSource">
<property name="driverClassName" value="${database.driver}"></property>
<property name="url" value="${database.url}"></property>
<property name="username" value="${database.user}"></property>
<property name="password" value="${database.password}"></property>
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean" id="sessionFactory">
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"></property>
<property name="annotatedClasses">
<list>
<value>com.dineshonjava.model.Employee</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="hibernateProperties">
<props>
<prop key="hibernate.dialect">${hibernate.dialect}</prop>
<prop key="hibernate.show_sql">${hibernate.show_sql}</prop>
<prop key="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto">${hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto} </prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager" id="hibernateTransactionManager">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"></property>
</bean>
</beans>
tiles.xml
<tiles-definitions>
<definition name="base.definition" template="/WEB-INF/views/mainTemplate.jsp">
<put-attribute name="title" value=""></put-attribute>
<put-attribute name="header" value="/WEB-INF/views/header.jsp"></put-attribute>
<put-attribute name="menu" value="/WEB-INF/views/menu.jsp"></put-attribute>
<put-attribute name="body" value=""></put-attribute>
<put-attribute name="footer" value="/WEB-INF/views/footer.jsp"></put-attribute>
</definition>
<definition extends="base.definition" name="addEmployee">
<put-attribute name="title" value="Employee Data Form"></put-attribute>
<put-attribute name="body" value="/WEB-INF/views/addEmployee.jsp"></put-attribute>
</definition>
<definition extends="base.definition" name="employeesList">
<put-attribute name="title" value="Employees List"></put-attribute>
<put-attribute name="body" value="/WEB-INF/views/employeesList.jsp"></put-attribute>
</definition>
</tiles-definitions>
database.properties
database.driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver database.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/DAVDB database.user=root database.password=root hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect hibernate.show_sql=true hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto=update
addEmployee.jsp
employeesList.jsp
menu.jsp
header.jsp
footer.jsp
mainTemplate.jsp
Once you are done with creating source and configuration files, export your application. Right click on your application and use Export-> WAR File option and save your Spring3TilesApp.war file in Tomcat’s webapps folder.
Now start your Tomcat server and make sure you are able to access other web pages from webapps folder using a standard browser. Now try a URL http://localhost:8080/sdnext/ and you should see the following result if everything is fine with your Spring Web Application:
Now we click on the List of Employee link on the Menu section then we get the following output screen we observe that only body of the mainTemplate is refreshed.
Dwonload this Application SourceCode+Libs
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