Spring Tiles Integration Tutorial / Example

In this example you will learn how to integrate Spring with Tiles  The directory structure of the example is shown below.

Add the following library files to the lib directory.

view source

print?

antlr-runtime-0

commons-logging-4

org.springframework.asm-M3

org.springframework.beans-M3

org.springframework.context-M3

org.springframework.context.support-M3

org.springframework.core-M3

org.springframework.expression-M3

org.springframework.web-M3

org.springframework.web.servlet-M3

commons-beanutils-0

commons-digester-8

commons-logging-api-1

jstl

standard

tiles-api-4

tiles-core-4

tiles-jsp-4

You will see how to create a simple classic tile layout with a header, menu, body and footer regions.

In Spring to use Tiles, configure the following Tile definition in the Spring configuration file.

view source

print?

<?xml version="0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"

xmlns:xsi="http://www.worg/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"

xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"

xsi:schemaLocation="

http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans

http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd

http://www.springframework.org/schema/context

http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view. ResourceBundleViewResolver" p:basename="views" />

<context:component-scan base-package="com.vaannila.web" />

<bean id="tilesConfigurer"class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles TilesConfigurer"p:definitions="/WEB-INF/tiles-defs.xml" />   

</beans>

Using the definitions attribute specify the location of the tiles definition file. Here the location is "/WEB-INF/tiles-defs.xml". The tiles definition file is shown below.

view source

print?

<?xml version="0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<!DOCTYPE tiles-definitions PUBLIC

"-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Tiles Configuration 0//EN"

"http://tiles.apache.org/dtds/tiles-config_2_dtd">

<tiles-definitions>

<definition name="baseLayout" template="/WEB-INF/tiles/baseLayout.jsp">

<put-attribute name="title"  value="Template"/>

<put-attribute name="header" value="/WEB-INF/tiles/header.jsp"/>

<put-attribute name="menu"   value="/WEB-INF/tiles/menu.jsp"/>

<put-attribute name="body"   value="/WEB-INF/tiles/body.jsp"/>

<put-attribute name="footer"   value="/WEB-INF/tiles/footer.jsp"/>

</definition>

<definition name="welcome" extends="baseLayout">

<put-attribute name="title"  value="Welcome"/>

<put-attribute name="body"   value="/WEB-INF/jsp/welcome.jsp"/>     

</definition>

<definition name="friends" extends="baseLayout">

<put-attribute name="title"  value="Friends"/>

<put-attribute name="body"   value="/WEB-INF/jsp/friends.jsp"/>     

</definition>

<definition name="office" extends="baseLayout">

<put-attribute name="title"  value="Office"/>

<put-attribute name="body"   value="/WEB-INF/jsp/office.jsp"/>     

</definition>

</tiles-definitions>

Here we first define a base layout, later we extend the base layout and create three more tile definitions by changing only the title and the body regions.

To dispaly views we use the ResourceBundleViewResolver. By default the views.properties file will be used to store the key value pairs, we specify this using the basename attribute.

view source

print?

welcome.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tilesTilesView

welcome.url=welcome

friends.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tilesTilesView

friends.url=friends

office.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tilesTilesView

office.url=office

about.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView

about.url=/WEB-INF/jsp/about.jsp

The welcome, friends and office refers to the tile definition names (the one to right side of the = sign). For tile views we use "org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles TilesView" class. You can also have other views together with the tile views. The about url is mapped to the about.jsp page with is aorg.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView.

The baseLayout.jsp file contains the table structure to hold the different regions.

view source

print?

<%@ taglib uri="http://tiles.apache.org/tags-tiles" prefix="tiles" %>

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 01 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.worg/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html>

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

<title><tiles:insertAttribute name="title" ignore="true" /></title>

</head>

<body>

<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" align="center">

<tr>

<td height="30" colspan="2">

<tiles:insertAttribute name="header" />

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td height="250">

<tiles:insertAttribute name="menu" />

</td>

<td width="350">

<tiles:insertAttribute name="body" />

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td height="30" colspan="2">

<tiles:insertAttribute name="footer" />

</td>

</tr>

</table>

</body>

</html>

Here we use annotated controller handler mapping to handle the request. In the redirect.jsp page we forward the request to the welcome.htm url.

view source

print?

<% response.sendRedirect("welcome.htm"); %>

The welcome.htm url will be handled by the WelcomeController class, where we forward it to thewelcome tile page.

view source

print?

package com.vaannila.web;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

@Controller

public class WelcomeController {

@RequestMapping("/welcome.htm")

public String redirect()

{

return "welcome";

}

}

Download Spring examples source code