Thanks for everyone with their quick responses to my query regarding how to override tags/JSP files. My initial posts on the subject can be found here:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/tomcat-users/200804.mbox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/tomcat-users/200804.mbox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] Many people suggested that I try various frameworks for the application because they contain template engines that may work for my purpose. Unfortunately, I think that this is a non-starter because the app is already written (quite nicely, I might add) in straight JSPs. I took a quick look through the various projects' websites and documentation. It seems like they all do roughly the same thing and that many of them are like JSPs but with their own custom syntax. That aside, I didn't see anything about how to skin the app at the level that I want. I saw mechanisms to use different templates for entire responses but nothing about overriding individual parts of those templates. Granted, I could be completely wrong about any and all of these points because I don't have first-hand experience with these frameworks. Anyway, I'd like to clarify my needs a little further because it didn't seem that the example in my second post was clear. First, my requirement are that it use straight JSPs. Second, I must be able to override any tag or JSP included from another tag/JSP file, not just whole response pages. Let me use a more complex example. Say I have the following response page and source files: [created just for discussion and edited for brevity] <%-- file: response.jsp --%> <my:table> <my:header cols='${cols}' /> <my:body rows='${rows}' /> </my:table> <%-- file: /WEB-INF/tags/table.tag --%> <table> <jsp:doBody /> </table> <%-- file: /WEB-INF/tags/header.tag --%> <%@ attribute name='cols' type='java.util.List' %> <tr> <c:forEach var='item' items='${cols}'> <my:headerCell data='${item}' /> </c:forEach> </tr> <%-- file: /WEB-INF/tags/headerCell.tag --%> <%@ attribute name='data' type='java.lang.Object' %> <th>${data}</th> <%-- file: /WEB-INF/tags/body.tag --%> <%@ attribute name='rows' type='java.util.List' %> <c:forEach var='row' items='${rows}'> <tr> <c:forEach var='cell' items='${row.cells}'> <my:rowCell data='${cell}' /> </c:forEach> </tr> </c:forEach> <%-- file: /WEB-INF/tags/rowCell.tag --%> <%@ attribute name='data' type='java.lang.Object' %> <td>${data}</td> Looking at the result, the contents of the page are the result of the composition of all of these JSPs and tags, structured like so: response.jsp /WEB-INF/tags/table.tag /WEB-INF/tags/header.tag /WEB-INF/tags/headerCell.tag ... /WEB-INF/tags/body.tag /WEB-INF/tags/rowCell.tag ... What I need is the ability to override any one of these parts independently and based on a user pref. Given User 1, 2, and 3 who have skin preference of <undefined>, "Foo", and "Bar", respectively, the output they each see for response.jsp can be different. The base case, User 1, that does not have a skin specified would see the response as structured like I illustrated above. However, skin "Foo" may replace the response.jsp file but leave the rest in place. And skin "Bar" may just replace headerCell.tag and rowCell.tag. For skin "Foo", the response page should be different but should continue to use all of the default tags. Whereas for skin "Bar", the response page table, header, and body tags stay the same; but the custom header cell and row cell tags are used instead of their defaults. In the last case, the structure of the response should look like this: response.jsp /WEB-INF/tags/table.tag /WEB-INF/tags/header.tag /skins/Foo/tags/headerCell.tag ... /WEB-INF/tags/body.tag /skins/Foo/tags/rowCell.tag ... Notice that the JSP/tag files that compose the response are a mixture of the default ones and the custom ones that the skin overrides. Skin authors should not have to make complete copies of the default skin tree in order to edit only a handful of files; the system should make that transparent to them. Does this make it any clearer? My apologies if the frameworks mention do exactly this and I just didn't notice from their documentation. But since the app is already written, it would make a massive change to introduce an additional dependency. As I mentioned in my first post, I browsed through the Jasper source but didn't see any way to hook into the JSP/tag file resolution mechanism. I figured that I could extend a factory class or register some kind of resolver that would allow me to achieve the results I need. Unfortunately many things were final and didn't provide hooks for extension. I'm going to be looking for reasonable workarounds if there's no way to extend Jasper. But if anyone know of anything else given my requirements, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! -AndyC --------------------------------------------------------------------- To start a new topic, e-mail: users@tomcat.apache.org To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
