In this tutorial, im trying to create a simple application using Sitemesh. According to Wikipedia, Sitemesh is a web-page layout and decoration framework and web application integration framework to aid in creating large sites consisting of many pages for which a consistent look/feel, navigation and layout scheme is required. So basically, Sitemesh is a templating engine or a decorator pattern.

Let’s start with a simple application, first is a maven’s pom.xml

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>com.edw</groupId>
    <artifactId>SitemeshExample</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>war</packaging>

    <name>SitemeshExample Web App</name>

    <properties>
        <endorsed.dir>${project.build.directory}/endorsed</endorsed.dir>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <netbeans.hint.deploy.server>Tomcat70</netbeans.hint.deploy.server>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax</groupId>
            <artifactId>javaee-web-api</artifactId>
            <version>6.0</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <version>4.8.1</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
        
        <dependency>
            <groupId>opensymphony</groupId>
            <artifactId>sitemesh</artifactId>
            <version>2.4.2</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.3.2</version>
                <configuration>
                    <source>1.6</source>
                    <target>1.6</target>
                    <compilerArguments>
                        <endorseddirs>${endorsed.dir}</endorseddirs>
                    </compilerArguments>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.1</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <phase>validate</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>copy</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <configuration>
                            <outputDirectory>${endorsed.dir}</outputDirectory>
                            <silent>true</silent>
                            <artifactItems>
                                <artifactItem>
                                    <groupId>javax</groupId>
                                    <artifactId>javaee-endorsed-api</artifactId>
                                    <version>6.0</version>
                                    <type>jar</type>
                                </artifactItem>
                            </artifactItems>
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
        <finalName>SitemeshExample</finalName>
    </build>
</project>

and this is my web.xml file,

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">
    <display-name>Sitemesh</display-name>
    <session-config>
        <session-timeout>
            30
        </session-timeout>
    </session-config>
    <welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
    </welcome-file-list>
    
    <filter>
        <filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
        <filter-class>com.opensymphony.sitemesh.webapp.SiteMeshFilter</filter-class>
    </filter>
 
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>
</web-app>

next step is creating decorators.xml under WEB-INF folder

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<decorators>
    <excludes>
        <pattern>/index.jsp</pattern> <!-- exclude example -->
        <pattern>*.js</pattern> <!-- exclude css files -->
        <pattern>*.css</pattern> <!-- exclude js files -->
    </excludes>
    <decorator name="basic-theme" page="/template/theme.jsp">        
        <pattern>/*</pattern>        
    </decorator>
</decorators>

and a base html template

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<%@ taglib uri="http://www.opensymphony.com/sitemesh/decorator" prefix="decorator" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <title>Title</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Header</h1>
    <p><b>Menu</b></p>
    
    <decorator:body />
    
    <h1>Footer</b></h1>
</body>
</html>

And 2 .jsp files for example, index.jsp and dodol.jsp
index.jsp

<div>
    <h2>Hello WORLD...!! (Without Sitemesh)</h2>
</div>

and dodol.jsp

    <h1>Hello World! (With Sitemesh)</h1>

these is the screenshot when i deploy my application,

and this is my netbeans project structure