Spring MVC with layout templates
If you have used other MVC frameworks (Rails or Grails for example) you will miss layout templates from Spring. I found an easy-to use solution which is also used in Grails under the hood. If you use Maven in your project, simply add it to the pom.xml file under the dependencies:
<dependency>
<groupId>opensymphony</groupId>
<artifactId>sitemesh</artifactId>
<version>2.4.2</version>
</dependency>Next, add the following to your web.xml:
<filter>
<filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
<filter-class>com.opensymphony.module.sitemesh.filter.PageFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>Add a new decorators.xml file under the WEB-INF directory:
<decorators defaultdir="/WEB-INF/layouts">
<decorator name="application" page="application.jsp">
<pattern>/*</pattern>
</decorator>
</decorators>This means /WEB-INF/layouts/application.jsp will be used for every url your application catch. You can specify others, for example /admin/* or /user/*:
<decorator name="admin" page="admin.jsp">
<pattern>/admin/*</pattern>
</decorator>
<decorator name="user" page="login.jsp">
<pattern>/user/*</pattern>
</decorator>Now. you need to create the layout file(s) under /WEB-INF/layouts directory. Use the following code in it:
<%@ taglib prefix="decorator" uri="http://www.opensymphony.com/sitemesh/decorator" %>
...html, head, title, etc...
<nav>
<decorator:navigation/>
</nav>
<decorator:body/>will be replaced as specified in the views:
<body>
<h1>The title of an article</h1>
<p>The body of the article</p>
</body>Visit the official SiteMesh website for more specified examples: http://www.opensymphony.com/sitemesh/
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