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Integrating Struts 2.0 and tiles

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I am currently evaluating some web frameworks for a pet project and was trying to implement Struts 2 with tiles. Neither the Sturts 2 website, nor the tiles website gave an easy way to integrated Struts 2 and tiles. It took me a while to get them to work together. This post describes a way I figured out how to integrate Struts 2 with tiles. Struts 2 provides a plugin for integrating tiles 2. This plugin is included in the complete bundle (struts-2.x.x.x-all.zip). The following are are the steps needed to integrate struts2 with tiles.
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  1. Download the struts complete bundle from the struts 2 website
  2. Download tiles 2 from tiles 2 website
  3. Download the tiles dependencies from the jakarta commons site
    • Commons BeanUtils 1.7.0 or above
    • Commons Digester 1.8 or above
    • Commons Logging 1.1 or above
  4. Create the layout page, and related files (except the layout, all the other files are basic jsps )
    <%@ taglib uri="http://tiles.apache.org/tags-tiles" prefix="tiles" %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Insert title here</title>
</head>
<body>
<table width="100%" height="100%">
<tr height="20%">
<td colspan="2" align="center" bgcolor="skyblue">
<tiles:insertAttribute name="header" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="cyan" width="75%"><tiles:insertAttribute name="body" /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20%">
<td colspan="2" align="center" bgcolor="skyblue"><tiles:insertAttribute name="footer" /></td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
  5. Create the HelloWorld Action class
    package example;

import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport;

public class HelloWorld extends ActionSupport {

public String execute() throws Exception {
System.out.println("Hello World");
return SUCCESS;
}
}
  6. Configure the Web Deployment descriptor by adding a tiles listener to the web.xml file of your web application.
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
id="WebApp_ID" version="2.5">
<display-name>tilesTest</display-name>
 <listener>
  <listener-class>
   org.apache.struts2.tiles.StrutsTilesListener
  </listener-class>
 </listener>
<filter>
<filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
<filter-class>
org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher
</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
</web-app>
  7. Configure struts to work with tiles, this can be done by either
    1. Extending the sturts package from "tiles-default"
      <package name="tilesTest" extends="tiles-default">
      2. OR
    2. Declaring a new "result-type", tiles, that will map to "org.apache.struts2.views.tiles.TilesResult"
      <result-types>
<result-type name="tiles" class="org.apache.struts2.views.tiles.TilesResult" />
</result-types>
  8. Set the type of the results in the package to "tiles"
    <result name="success" type="tiles">helloworld.home</result>

    struts.xml
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC
"-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 2.0//EN"
"http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-2.0.dtd">

<struts>
<package name="tilesTest" extends="struts-default">
  <result-types>
   <result-type name="tiles" class="org.apache.struts2.views.tiles.TilesResult" />
  </result-types>
<action name="helloWorld" class="example.HelloWorld">
<result name="success" type="tiles">helloworld.home</result>
</action>
</package>
</struts>
    Note that the result "helloword.home" must match the definition name in tiles.xml file.
  9. Create definitions for tiles in WEB-INF/tiles.xml file.
    <!DOCTYPE tiles-definitions PUBLIC
"-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Tiles Configuration 2.0//EN"
"http://tiles.apache.org/dtds/tiles-config_2_0.dtd">
<tiles-definitions>
 <definition name="helloworld.home" template="/layouts/layout.jsp">
  <put-attribute name="header" value="/layouts/header.jsp" />
  <put-attribute name="body" value="/index.html" />
  <put-attribute name="footer" value="/layouts/footer.jsp" />
 </definition>
</tiles-definitions>
  10. The following is a list of jar files used for this example (copied to the WEB-INF/lib directory)
    • commons-beanutils.jar
    • commons-digester-1.8.jar
    • commons-logging-1.1.1.jar
    • freemarker-2.3.8.jar
    • ognl-2.6.11.jar
    • struts2-core-2.0.11.1.jar
    • struts2-tiles-plugin-2.0.11.1.jar
    • tiles-api-2.0.5.jar
    • tiles-core-2.0.5.jar
    • tiles-jsp-2.0.5.jar
    • xwork-2.0.4.jar
  11. This example was implemented on tomcat 6.0.16, with Java 5 update 11
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