How to integrate Struts 2 with Tiles 3

Question

How do we integrate Struts 2 with Tiles 3? The struts2-tiles-plugin currently (2.3.4.1) works with an older version of tiles (version 2.0.6) this can be a bit of a nuisance.

This is a self-answer, to help others with their integration.

Answer 1

Thanks to Ken a new plugin was added to Struts 2 to support Tiles 3 result type, it should be available with upcoming new release - Struts 2.3.9

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/WW/Tiles+3+Plugin

Answer 2

The solution is to add the required dependencies, load tiles with an appropriate listener and create a custom result type. Fortunately these steps are quite easy, once done you can follow normal tiles 2 examples for a how to define templates.

1) Dependencies (start with basic struts project but in this example I'll use conventions so it might just be best to add struts2-conventions-plugin, it will include struts2-core et al):

• DO NOT INCLUDE struts2-tiles-plugin
• groupId: org.apache.tiles, artifiactId: tiles-extras, version: 3.0.1
• groupId: org.slf4j, artifiactId: jcl-over-slf4j, version: 1.5.8
• groupId: org.slf4j, artifiactId: slf4j-jdk14, version: 1.5.8

Note: A higher version of the slf4j dependencies may work I have not tested this.

2) load tiles with an appropriate listener

This example includes the full web.xml, lines 3-5 are the only thing that should be new to someone familiar with struts2.

<?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">
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.apache.tiles.extras.complete.CompleteAutoloadTilesListener</listener-class>
    </listener>
    <filter>
        <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
        <filter-class>org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.ng.filter.StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter</filter-class>
    </filter>
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>
</web-app>

3) create a custom result type

We need to define a custom result type for use with our actions:

package com.quaternion.result;

import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionInvocation;
import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import org.apache.struts2.ServletActionContext;
import org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.ServletDispatcherResult;
import org.apache.tiles.TilesContainer;
import org.apache.tiles.access.TilesAccess;
import org.apache.tiles.request.ApplicationContext;
import org.apache.tiles.request.servlet.ServletRequest;
import org.apache.tiles.request.servlet.ServletUtil;

public class TilesResult extends ServletDispatcherResult {

    public TilesResult() {
        super();
    }

    public TilesResult(String location) {
        super(location);
    }

    @Override
    public void doExecute(String location, ActionInvocation invocation) throws Exception {
        //location = "test.definition"; //for test
        setLocation(location);
        ServletContext context = ServletActionContext.getServletContext();
        ApplicationContext applicationContext = ServletUtil.getApplicationContext(context);
        TilesContainer container = TilesAccess.getContainer(applicationContext);
        HttpServletRequest request = ServletActionContext.getRequest();
        HttpServletResponse response = ServletActionContext.getResponse();
        ServletRequest servletRequest = new ServletRequest(applicationContext, request, response);
        container.render(location, servletRequest);
    }
}

4) We also need to tell struts2 about our result type:

<?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>
    <constant name="struts.devMode" value="true" />
    <constant name="struts.ui.theme" value="simple" />
    <package  name="tiles-package"  namespace="" extends="struts-default">
        <result-types>
            <result-type default="true" name="tiles-result" class="com.quaternion.result.TilesResult"/>
        </result-types>
    </package>   
</struts>

With that out of the way we can now use tiles in our projects, assume we have created a tiles definition called "test.definition" we can tell our action to use that definition by doing the following:

package com.quaternion.demo.action.test;

import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport;
import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.ParentPackage;
import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.Result;

@ParentPackage("tiles-package")
@Result(type="tiles-result", location="test.definition")
public class QuaternionResultTest extends ActionSupport{}

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That's it, this will let you configure any version of struts2 with tiles 3+, please see http://tiles.apache.org/framework/index.html for further configuration details.