Tiles in Spring

14.3. Tiles

It is possible to integrate Tiles - just as any other viewtechnology - in web applications using Spring. The following describesin a broad way how to do this.

NOTE: This section focuses on Spring's support for Tiles 2 (the standalone version of Tiles, requiring Java 5+) in the org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2package. Spring also continues to support Tiles 1.x (a.k.a. "StrutsTiles", as shipped with Struts 1.1+; compatible with Java 1.4) in theoriginal org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles package.

14.3.1. Dependencies

To be able to use Tiles you have to have a couple of additionaldependencies included in your project. The following is the list ofdependencies you need.

• Tiles version 2.0.4 or higher

• Commons BeanUtils

• Commons Digester

• Commons Logging

These dependencies are all available in the Spring distribution.

14.3.2. How to integrate Tiles

To be able to use Tiles, you have to configure it using filescontaining definitions (for basic information on definitions and otherTiles concepts, please have a look at http://tiles.apache.org). In Spring this is done using the TilesConfigurer. Have a look at the following piece of example ApplicationContext configuration:

<bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer">
  <property name="definitions">
    <list>
      <value>/WEB-INF/defs/general.xml</value>
      <value>/WEB-INF/defs/widgets.xml</value>
      <value>/WEB-INF/defs/administrator.xml</value>
      <value>/WEB-INF/defs/customer.xml</value>
      <value>/WEB-INF/defs/templates.xml</value>
    </list>
  </property>
</bean>

As you can see, there are five files containing definitions, which are all located in the 'WEB-INF/defs' directory. At initialization of the WebApplicationContext,the files will be loaded and the definitions factory will beinitialized. After that has been done, the Tiles includes in thedefinition files can be used as views within your Spring webapplication. To be able to use the views you have to have a ViewResolver just as with any other view technology used with Spring. Below you can find two possibilities, the UrlBasedViewResolver and the ResourceBundleViewResolver.

14.3.2.1. UrlBasedViewResolver

The UrlBasedViewResolver instantiates the given viewClass for each view it has to resolve.

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver">
  <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView"/>
</bean>

14.3.2.2. ResourceBundleViewResolver

The ResourceBundleViewResolver has to be provided with a property file containing viewnames and viewclasses the resolver can use:

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">
  <property name="basename" value="views"/>
</bean>

...
welcomeView.class=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView
welcomeView.url=welcome (this is the name of a Tiles definition)

vetsView.class=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView
vetsView.url=vetsView (again, this is the name of a Tiles definition)

findOwnersForm.class=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView
findOwnersForm.url=/WEB-INF/jsp/findOwners.jsp
...

As you can see, when using the ResourceBundleViewResolver, you can easily mix different view technologies.

Note that the TilesView class for Tiles 2 supports JSTL (the JSP Standard Tag Library) out of the box, whereas there is a separate TilesJstlView subclass in the Tiles 1.x support.

14.3.2.3. SimpleSpringPreparerFactory and SpringBeanPreparerFactory

As an advanced feature, Spring also supports two special Tiles 2 PreparerFactory implementations. Check out the Tiles documentation for details on how to use ViewPreparer references in your Tiles definition files.

Specify SimpleSpringPreparerFactoryto autowire ViewPreparer instances based on specified preparer classes,applying Spring's container callbacks as well as applying configuredSpring BeanPostProcessors. If Spring's context-wide annotation-confighas been activated, annotations in ViewPreparer classes will beautomatically detected and applied. Note that this expects preparer classes in the Tiles definition files, just like the default PreparerFactory does.

Specify SpringBeanPreparerFactory to operate on specified preparer namesinstead of classes, obtaining the corresponding Spring bean from theDispatcherServlet's application context. The full bean creation processwill be in the control of the Spring application context in this case,allowing for the use of explicit dependency injection configuration,scoped beans etc. Note that you need to define one Spring beandefinition per preparer name (as used in your Tiles definitions).

<bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer">
  <property name="definitions">
    <list>
      <value>/WEB-INF/defs/general.xml</value>
      <value>/WEB-INF/defs/widgets.xml</value>
      <value>/WEB-INF/defs/administrator.xml</value>
      <value>/WEB-INF/defs/customer.xml</value>
      <value>/WEB-INF/defs/templates.xml</value>
    </list>
  </property>

  <!-- resolving preparer names as Spring bean definition names -->
  <property name="preparerFactoryClass"
       value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.SpringBeanPreparerFactory"/>

</bean>