Attribute rendering

Attribute rendering behaviour can be customized. The "type" of an attribute can be still string, definition or template but you can define new types or use a class name directly.

Default behaviour

The default behaviour of Tiles is compatible with Tiles 2.0 and it applies both to XML definition files and JSP tags. Tiles follows these steps:

• If the type is not specified:
• if the value is a valid definition name, the definition is rendered;
• if the value starts with a '/', a template will be rendered;
• otherwise, a string will be rendered.
• If the type is specified:
• if the type is string, definition or template, it will be rendered like in Tiles 2.0;
• otherwise, Tiles tries to instantiate (only once) a class whose name is specified in the "type" of the attribute. If an error occurs, it pops up as a runtime exception.

Customize attribute rendering

With Tiles 2.1+ you can customize rendering in three ways:

• specifying new renderers;
• overriding the default renderer for untyped attributes;
• specifying a new renderer factory.