Should we remove HTML attributes while using Thymeleaf?

Question

I'm studying Thymeleaf and have found out that in almost all examples there are Thymeleaf's tag values as well as standard HTML values like:

<title th:text="#{product.page.title}">Page Title</title>

<link href="../static/css/bootstrap-3.3.7-dist/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet"
      th:href="@{/css/bootstrap-3.3.7-dist/bootstrap.css}"/>

<script src="../static/js/jquery-3.1.1.js"
        th:src="@{/js/jquery-3.1.1.js}"></script>

These standard tag values like Page Title or href="../static/css/bootstrap-3.3.7-dist/bootstrap.min.css" etc. are ignoring by controller and don't rendering on the page.

I'm wondering – is it just a good practice to leave them to improve code readability or it is better to remove them to clean up code?

Because for the compiler they are useless and have not any affect to the rendering result.

Answer 1

This depends entirely on your development process.

You could keep the HTML attributes around in the early phases, while you are still trying to lay out the page using just your browser.

But, once you get to a point where you are using automated unit / web testing, you can safely remove the HTML attributes because this testing should always be using a prod-like environment (which would include thymeleaf).