TilesConfigurer does not support the new configuration model of Tiles 2.2 [SPR-6097]

[spring-projects-issues]

Oliver Drotbohm opened SPR-6097 and commented

Using latest Tiles 2.2 with the TilesConfigurer a lot of deprecations pop up in the configurer code and tiles logs some warnings it does not support property based configuration anymore. Looks like one has to subclass BasicTilesContainerFactory and hand out instances rather than populate Tiles with classnames.

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Affects: 3.0 M4

Attachments:

• SPR-6097.patch (15.30 kB)
• Tiles2_2compatConfigurer.java (16.86 kB)
• Tiles2_2Configurer.java (5.33 kB)

Issue Links:

• Support Tiles 2.2 for Velocity and FreeMarker purposes [SPR-5609] #10280 Support Tiles 2.2 for Velocity and FreeMarker purposes

Referenced from: commits bef30a8

2 votes, 1 watchers

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

We just caught up with Tiles 2.1 for Spring 3.0, after Spring 2.5 having been tied to Tiles 2.0... I suppose we'll have to stick with Tiles 2.1 for the time being, since Tiles 2.2 is still marked as alpha. Let's pick this up again for Spring 3.1, possibly requiring Tiles 2.2 then.

Juergen

[spring-projects-issues]

Oliver Drotbohm commented

That's what I thought, too, looking at their website. Nevertheless There is a JAR marked as plain 2.2.0 in the central Maven repository (http://repo2.maven.org/maven2/org/apache/tiles/tiles-jsp/2.2.0/), so that's why I thought 2.2 is already final though.

[spring-projects-issues]

mck commented

Makes Spring-3.0.1 compatible with Tiles-2.2.2
( Tiles-2.2.1 is busted due to https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TILES-484 ).

Drops support for "tile-properties", "use-mutable-tiles-container", and "definitions-factory-class" properties, all of which did nothing in tiles >=2.2.1 anyway.

[spring-projects-issues]

mck commented

An improved approve is to add new files and leave the existing TilesConfigurer as-is (although to change its named to "Tiles2_1Configurer" would be wise IMHO).

This approach does not break compatibility as

• TilesConfigurer remains as-is, working for existing setups, but will never support Tiles-2.2+,

• Tiles2_2compatConfigurer supports most of the same spring-bean properties, and generally works in the same manner, it also adds properties "customAttributeRenderers" and "customAttributeEvaluators",

• Tiles2_2Configurer works as Tiles2.2 wants it too, that is there is no parameter initialisation and the client must provide their own AbstractTilesContainerFactory, so this configurer has one spring-bean property "tilesContainerFactory". To get things quickly up and running most users would use
  <bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="no.finntech.control.servlet.tiles.Tiles2_2Configurer">
  <property name="tilesContainerFactory" value="org.apache.tiles.factory.BasicTilesContainerFactory"/>
  </bean>
  OR
  <bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="no.finntech.control.servlet.tiles.Tiles2_2Configurer">
  <property name="tilesContainerFactory" value="org.apache.tiles.extras.complete.CompleteAutoloadTilesContainerFactory"/>
  </bean>

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

FYI, I'm working on a TilesConfigurer revision which is capable of adapting to Tiles 2.1.2 as well as to Tiles 2.2 - in the very same TilesConfigurer class. I'm also adding a "completeAutoload" bean property (working against Tiles 2.2 only) and a way to specify a custom TilesInitializer.

This will make it into the upcoming Spring 3.0.1 release unless we're encountering a showstopper...

Juergen

[spring-projects-issues]

mck commented

Looks good! And fantastic it's ready for 3.0.1

One concern i have is that there is no support/property for providing your own AbstractTilesContainerFactory.
This is demonstrated in the very simple Tiles2_2Configurer.java that's (see attachment).
Although i'm new to both Spring and Tiles it is my understanding that this manner of replacing parameter-initialisation by providing your own AbstractTilesContainerFactory is the preferred approach now.
It's fine to keep running our own TilesConfigurer, but Tiles2_2Configurer.java is simple and generic enough i see it's value committed (maybe under a new name like TilesContainerFactoryConfigurer :-) in addition to your revised TilesConfiguerer.

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

I actually considered that in the form of TilesConfigurer's new "tilesInitializer" property which accepts a TilesInitializer implementation: that TilesInitializer may in turn build any AbstractTilesContainerFactory through its createContainerFactory method. So this should be supported with TilesConfigurer itself now, typically as inner <bean class="...MyTilesInitializer"/> definition within the <property name="tilesInitializer"> tag.

I had the impression that TilesInitializer is what the Tiles docs are recommending as the primary point of customization: http://tiles.apache.org/framework/tutorial/configuration.html - They are only really talking about TilesContainerFactory and TilesApplicationContext in the "Configuring Tiles internals" section. When extending AbstractTilesListener or AbstractTilesServlet, you're always supposed to provide a custom TilesInitializer.

Juergen

[spring-projects-issues]

mck commented

You're very right! i'm happy :-)

[spring-projects-issues]

Keith Donald commented

The number of modules in Tiles has really exploded in version 2.2. In my application, with Tiles 2.1 all I needed to declare in my .pom was tiles-jsp, and could rely on it to transitively pull down tiles-servlet, tiles-core, and tiles-api. With Tiles 2.2, this doesn't work. Currently, I'm having to add tiles-el and tiles-servlet-wildcard to my .pom to get around ClassNotFoundExceptions for classes in each of those modules. Since I assume these are optional modules (otherwise I would expect tiles-jsp to pull them down transitively), the fact I have to declare them in my .pom just to run Tiles 2.2 in a JSP environment leads me to believe there is a bug somewhere.

[spring-projects-issues]

mck commented

Keith's comment also points out that the exception's message thrown from line 178 is wrong. It may well be Tiles-2.2 running, but that tiles-extras-2.2 hasn't been provided.

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

Good point - I fixed that error message to specifically point to Tiles-Extras 2.2.

Juergen