Monday, June 6, 2011

SpringMVC 3 + Tiles 2.2.2 Integration

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 http://tiles.apache.org/ .

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



 
   
     
       /WEB-INF/tiles.xml
     
   
 

 
   <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView"/>


Step#3: Configure tiles definitions in WEB-INF/tiles.xml

 


 
  <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" />
 
 
 
  <put-attribute name="title" value="SivaLabs : Login" />
  <put-attribute name="navigation" value="" />
  <put-attribute name="body" value="/jsp/login.jsp" />
 
  
 
  <put-attribute name="title" value="SivaLabs : Welcome" />
  <put-attribute name="body" value="/jsp/welcome.jsp" />

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>

</head>
<body>


    


        <tiles:insertAttribute name="header" />
    



        

<tiles:insertAttribute name="navigation" />
        

<tiles:insertAttribute name="body" />
    



        

<tiles:insertAttribute name="footer" />
    



</body>
</html>

header.jsp


SivaLabs : My Experiments On Technology


footer.jsp


 © 2011 SivaLabs All Rights Reserved

navigation.jsp

Create User

View Users

Logout

welcome.jsp


Welcome to SpringMVC+Tiles Sample Application


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.

You can download the code from https://github.com/sivaprasadreddy/sivalabs-blog-samples-code/tree/master/springmvc-tiles
Posted by Unknown at June 06, 2011
Labels: ,

17 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 7, 2012 at 4:37 AM

    A lot of people is seeing this page, but no comments, well this is the first, good job, i am getting started with tiles and spring, thanks and hope you can continue with more experiments to increase your skills

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 3, 2012 at 10:35 AM

    Hey you may want to add that you need WEB-INF in the tiles defs for the path to a jsp

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownFebruary 3, 2012 at 11:35 AM

      At the time of writing this article, i did put my jsps directly in WebContent/jsp folder. So I didn't need to add /WEB-INF/ prefix to jsps path.

      Delete
    2. AnonymousMay 16, 2012 at 6:22 PM

      Hi,
      I am getting below error while using spring3 with tiles, i have included log4j-over-slf4j-1.6.4.jar, but still result is same

      org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'tilesConfigurer' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/dispatcher-servlet.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.apache.log4j.Log4jLoggerFactory
      at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1412)
      at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:519)
      at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:456)
      at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:291)
      at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:222)
      ...

      Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.apache.log4j.Log4jLoggerFactory
      at org.apache.log4j.LogManager.getLogger(LogManager.java:42)
      at org.slf4j.impl.Log4jLoggerFactory.getLogger(Log4jLoggerFactory.java:64)
      at org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getLogger(LoggerFactory.java:253)
      at org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getLogger(LoggerFactory.java:265)
      at org.apache.tiles.startup.AbstractTilesInitializer.(AbstractTilesInitializer.java:45)
      at org.apache.tiles.startup.BasicTilesInitializer.(BasicTilesInitializer.java:37)
      at org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer$SpringTilesInitializer.(TilesConfigurer.java:371)
      at org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer$SpringTilesInitializer.(TilesConfigurer.java:371)
      at org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer.createTilesInitializer(TilesConfigurer.java:352)
      at org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer.afterPropertiesSet(TilesConfigurer.java:317)
      at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.invokeInitMethods(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1469)
      at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1409)
      ... 33 more


      Thanks in advance

      Delete
    3. Rajkumar ShanmuganathanNovember 20, 2012 at 2:21 AM

      Hi Did you resolve this problem?

      Delete
    4. UnknownNovember 20, 2012 at 6:46 AM

      Based on the error stacktrace, it seems log4j.jar is not in classpath.
      Add log4j jar file to classpath.

      Delete
  3. Esteve SchoutenAugust 24, 2012 at 3:38 PM

    Hi, i need your help...

    I try to integrate Spring 3.1.1 with tiles 2.2.2, i have this libraries :

    commons-beanutils-1.8.3.jar
    commons-beanutils-bean-collections-1.8.3.jar
    commons-beanutils-core-1.8.3.jar
    commons-digester-2.1.jar
    jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.3.jar
    slf4j-api-1.6.3.jar
    slf4j-log4j12-1.6.3.jar
    tiles-api-2.2.2.jar
    tiles-core-2.2.2.jar
    tiles-jsp-2.2.2.jar
    tiles-servlet-2.2.2.jar

    but jboss return this error in the deploy

    org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'tilesConfigurer' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/iquaback-servlet.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.ClassCastException: class org.apache.tiles.servlet.context.ServletTilesRequestContextFactory
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1455)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:519)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:456)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MxRBlindMarch 15, 2013 at 11:37 AM

      Any findings on this? I'm facing the same

      Delete
    2. UnknownMarch 21, 2013 at 6:39 AM

      I have the same..can you please update if you had solved it?

      Delete
    3. UnknownJanuary 3, 2014 at 11:24 AM

      Hi,
      I have deployed and tested the application on JBoss 5.1.0 and JBoss AS 7.1.0.FINAL servers and is working fine. This issue seems present in very initial versions of Spring 3 libraries, see https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SPR-6606.

      Let me know with which JBoss version you are facing issue.

      Thanks,
      Siva

      Delete
  4. HugoSeptember 25, 2012 at 9:19 PM

    Did you resolve this issue? I am having the same exception.

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownFebruary 20, 2013 at 11:50 PM

    Hi Siva,
    I had to use instead of to get it worked. Is it working as it is for you

    ReplyDelete
  6. johnnyApril 18, 2013 at 6:53 AM

    Hi,

    what is the web.xml configuration.
    what should be the startup page,
    servlet configuration.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sandeep KumarJanuary 3, 2014 at 8:48 AM

    Hi Siva,

    Sorry to say, it is not working for me. I am sure that it is related to setup issue (jars and all), for expert like you, should not be a problem but for me it's giving a very hard time :)

    I have configured following as POM.XML. If you have time, can you please correct me?


    junit
    junit
    3.8.1
    test


    org.apache.tiles
    tiles-template
    2.2.1


    org.apache.tiles
    tiles-servlet
    2.2.1


    org.apache.tiles
    tiles-jsp
    2.2.1


    org.springframework
    spring-webmvc
    3.1.2.RELEASE


    org.springframework
    spring-web
    3.1.2.RELEASE


    jstl
    jstl
    1.2


    org.slf4j
    slf4j-log4j12
    1.4.2

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownJanuary 3, 2014 at 10:47 AM

      Hi Sandeep,
      I have created a sample application as i described in the post and uploaded into my GitHub repo.
      https://github.com/sivaprasadreddy/sivalabs-blog-samples-code/tree/master/springmvc-tiles

      Please see the code and let me know if you still face any issues. You can reach me at sivaprasadreddy.k@gmail.com

      Thanks,
      Siva

      Delete
    2. UnknownJanuary 3, 2014 at 10:54 AM

      Just FYI, I have tested it on Tomcat 6.0.37 and 7.0.40 and is working fine.

      Delete
  8. UnknownDecember 3, 2014 at 2:17 PM

    best article on spring mvc layout creation, easy and straight to the point. kudos to you siva.

    ReplyDelete

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