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The paths used in a Tiles definition file are treated as context relative

even if that definition is used for a specific module.

See Also

This topic has been discussed on the struts user mailing list. One particular thread

you may find helpful is archived at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=struts 

user&m=109579114312336&w=2.

If you are unfamiliar with Struts modules, see Recipe 2.5.

14.7 Reusing a Common Page Layout

with SiteMesh

Problem

You want render your application's pages using a common layout without having to

change your JSP pages or your application's Struts configuration.

Solution

Use SiteMesh to wrap your application's pages with a common layout and other pre 

sentation features.

Discussion

SiteMesh (http://www.opensymphony.com/sitemesh/) is a web page layout and deco 

ration framework. It allows you to decorate the web pages of an existing application

with a common layout. It provides similar features as Tiles but uses a completely dif 

ferent approach. When you use Tiles, you adopt the Tiles way of doing things by

constructing pages using Tiles custom JSP tags, creating definitions in a Tiles config 

uration file, and linking actions to Tiles using the

TilesRequestProcessor

. Tiles

becomes a pervasive part of your web application.

SiteMesh takes a different approach. It uses a servlet filter to modify the HTTP

responses generated by your application, with responses typically generated by JSP

pages. SiteMesh amends the response based on settings in a configuration file.

Suppose you have a site with three web pages: a main page, and two secondary

pages. The main page looks something like Figure 14 5.

The secondary pages referred to by the two hyperlinks are, like this page, simple.

The struts config.xml file for this application is shown in Example 14 13.

456 | Chapter 14: Tiles and Other Presentation Approaches

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