Adding a style sheet
Since tiles are JSP pages, all the usual accouterments are available, including CSSs [W3C, CSS]. Using a style sheet with your tiles is not required but can be helpful. While full support of CSSs eludes today's browsers, they are still a useful way to define color schemes and some other key attributes. Style sheets help ensure that these niceties remain consistent from tile to tile.
-
To specify a style sheet, simply insert the usual tag. The
<html:base>
tag can help resolve relative paths to the style sheets and other assets. Better yet, use the
<html:rewrite>
tag to render the path for you, and URL-encode it in the bargain. See Using <html:base> and <html:rewrite> shows how to use both tags.
Using <html:base> and <html:rewrite>
|
<%@ taglib uri="/tags/struts-html" prefix="html" %>
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE><tiles:getAsString name="title"/></TITLE>
<html:base/>
<LINK rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
ref="<html:rewrite page='/assets/styles/global.css'/>">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Templates and MVC
Dynamic templates work especially well within a Model-View-Controller architecture. (See chapter 2 for more about MVC.) Used correctly, dynamic templates cleanly separate markup from content. In practice, the portion of a page with the actual content is often tucked away in the center, surrounded by areas devoted to markup and navigation. Content, markup, and navigation map easily to the roles of Model, View, and Controller.
-
Often, an MVC template system can be created from an existing application just by using standard refactoring techniques. The base markup for the page can be extracted into a master template. The site header and footer are extracted into their own files; the center square with the actual content goes into its own template file as well. The base template includes them back again. Related technologies, like CSS, can be used to define formatting in the base template and have it apply seamlessly to the others that form the final page.
definition
Refactoring is the process of improving software by restructuring its source code for clarity and flexibility and by eliminating redundant or unused code.
The Tiles package takes this one step further with its Definition feature. Using Definitions, we can streamline the number of physical templates an application needs and move the implementation details into a central JavaServer Page or, better yet, an XML document.
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