Configuring Tiles

Your application needs to be configured to work with Tiles. There are various options, depending on your needs, your application type, etc.

Starting Tiles in a web application

Tiles has always been a web application package, usually used in conjunction with Struts. Tiles 2 evolved to the point of being technology-independent, but its use in a Servlet-based web application will be the most frequent use case.

Starting Tiles engine

To start Tiles you have three options, just choose what is the best for your needs:

  • Load the Tiles servlet at startup. You can do it by specifying it in your web.xml file:
    <servlet>
    <servlet-name>tiles</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.apache.tiles.web.startup.TilesServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>
          org.apache.tiles.impl.BasicTilesContainer.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG
        </param-name>
        <param-value>
          /WEB-INF/tiles-defs.xml,/org/apache/tiles/classpath-defs.xml
        </param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>2</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

    As you can see, the init parameter org.apache.tiles.impl.BasicTilesContainer.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG specifies the path of the Tiles configuration files. You can specify it also as a context parameters.

    Note: The Tiles servlet is just a startup servlet and it does not serve any request. Therefore, a mapping is not needed.

  • Load the Tiles listener. Specify it in your web.xml file:
    <listener>
    <listener-class>org.apache.tiles.web.startup.TilesListener</listener-class>
</listener>

    You can specify the Tiles configuration files using a context parameter.

        <context-param>
        <param-name>
          org.apache.tiles.impl.BasicTilesContainer.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG
        </param-name>
        <param-value>
          /WEB-INF/tiles-defs.xml,/org/apache/tiles/classpath-defs.xml
        </param-value>
    </context-param>
  • Load the Tiles filter. It is useful if your definition files can be changed and you periodically need to reload them.
    <filter>
    <filter-name>Tiles Filter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.apache.tiles.web.startup.TilesFilter</filter-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>
          org.apache.tiles.impl.BasicTilesContainer.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG
        </param-name>
        <param-value>
          /WEB-INF/tiles-defs.xml,/org/apache/tiles/classpath-defs.xml
        </param-value>
    </init-param>
</filter>
...
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>Tiles Filter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    <dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>

Starting Tiles in a portlet application

TBD

Configuring Tiles internals

You can configure Tiles internal behaviour by specifying:

  • in a web application environment, by using context parameters or init parameters of TilesServlet or TilesFilter;
  • in a portlet environment, by using portlet init parameters.

    For the details see Tiles configuration reference.