Apache Tiles

What's new in Tiles 2.2

Tiles 2.2 is a binary-compatible enhancement of Tiles 2.1.x, with some incompatible changes in JSP tags, but, for the user perspective, it is perfectly compatible.

New features in Tiles 2.2

Tiles 2.2 has several new features:

Native support for FreeMarker, instead of a support based on JSP.
Support for Velocity.
Support for pattern matching using regular expressions.
OGNL support and MVEL support in Tiles definition files, when specifying attributes and templates.
Ready to use configuration classes to ease startup with minimal coding.

Deprecations in Tiles 2.2

Startup with initialization parameters is not deprecated. See the configuration page to know how to configure Tiles with Java.

Removals in Tiles 2.2

Support of retrotranslated packages to be compatible with Java 1.4. It is possible, though, to retrotranslate the packages manually.
Support for Servlets 2.4 and JSP 2.0 when creating ELAttributeEvaluator. It is still possible to use it manually.

New features in Tiles 2.1

Tiles 2.1 introduces new features, but remaining compatible to Tiles 2.0.x. The new features are:

Anonymous nested definitions: now definitions can be put just as an attribute in an enclosing definition, without the necessity to define a new named definition to use only once.
Wildcard support: wildcards are supported:
- in XML definition files;
- when enumerating the list of Tiles definition files to load.
EL support in Tiles definition files, when specifying attributes and templates.
Ability to load Tiles 1.x definition files.
Pure Java configuration, except for the configuration of the Tiles container factory.
List attributes can now inherit members from the extending definition.
Attribute values can be cascaded to nested definitions, so the configuration is easier to write.
Ability to override the template when inserting definitions.
Customize rendering of attributes, for example to write integrations with other frameworks.
Usage of more than one Tiles container.

Under the hood

TilesApplicationContext is now created externally of the Tiles container and must be configured externally.
Tiles exceptions are all unchecked now: you can now remove all your try-catches.
Added the concept of "definition DAO" that allows loading definitions from various sources, for example a DB.

Documentation

Reference

Developers

Modules