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