Include part of tile with Apache Tiles?

Question

I'm having a hard time with Tiles.

I have a webapp with many views, all of these are composed around a single template. The template has about three or four "placeholders", and for each view, different, dynamically generated content should be placed in the correct placeholder.

When I define a new view with Tiles I need to create multiple JSP file - each with a placeholder's content. Then I need to update a huge XML file that has a lot of entries that look just the same.

I'm looking for a solution that'll allow me to declare all these placeholder's content in the same file, and partially include this file into the template (every fragment to its placeholder).

I was looking at Velocity and FreeMarker as well, but either of these doesn't seem to have a partial-include feature.

What are my options here? I'm willing to consider a change of framework just to make it a little less tedious to create yet another view.

Thanks!

Sorry, I need more details. 1. When you talk about multiple JSP files, are you referring to the content to be used in the placeholder of your template? 2. The huge XML file is Tiles configuration file? — fcracker79

QGA QGA · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-29T15:33:07

I believe the reason why your xml file is huge is because you might not have extended the default template as follow

This should be your base template:

<definition name="app.base" template="/WEB-INF/templates/default.jsp">
   <put-attribute name="title" value="Not Found" />
   <put-attribute name="header" value="/WEB-INF/tiles/header.jsp" />
   <put-attribute name="body" value="/WEB-INF/tiles/body.jsp" />
   <put-attribute name="footer" value="/WEB-INF/tiles/footer.jsp" />
   <put-list-attribute name="stylesheets">
        <add-attribute value="/static/public/css/bootstrap.min.css" />          
        <add-attribute value="/static/protected/css/header.css" />
        <add-attribute value="/static/protected/css/footer.css" />
   </put-list-attribute>
   <put-list-attribute name="javascripts">
        <add-attribute value="/static/public/js/jquery-2.1.4.min.js" />
        <add-attribute value="/static/public/js/bootstrap.js" />
   </put-list-attribute>    
</definition>

Now that you have a basic template you can EXTEND it as follow:

<definition name="home" extends="app.base">
   <put-attribute name="title" value="Home Page" />
   <put-attribute name="body" value="/WEB-INF/tiles/home.jsp" />
   <put-list-attribute name="stylesheets" inherit="true">
       <add-attribute value="/static/protected/css/whatever.css" />
   </put-list-attribute>
</definition>

This new page is going to include both css stylesheets of the app base and the home page

Is this of help?

Include part of tile with Apache Tiles?

1 Answers