Struts Tiles

Tiles is a framework for the development user interface. Tiles is enables the developers to develop the web applications by assembling the reusable tiles (jsp, html, etc..). Tiles uses the concept of reuse and enables the developers to define a template for the web site and then use this layout to populate the content of the web site. For example, if you have to develop a web site having more that 500 page of static content and many dynamically generated pages. The layout of the web site often changes according to the business requirement. In this case you can use the Tiles framework to design the template for the web site and use this template to populate the contents. In future if there is any requirement of site layout change then you have to change the layout in one page. This will change the layout of you whole web site.

Steps To Create Tiles Application

Tiles is very useful framework for the development of web applications. Here are the steps necessary for adding Tiles to your Struts application:

1. Add the Tiles Tag Library Descriptor (TLD) file to the web.xml.
2. Create layout JSPs.
3. Develop the web pages using layouts.
4. Repackage, run and test application.

Add the Tiles TLD to web.xml file
Tiles can can be used with or without Struts. Following entry is required in the web.xml file before you can use the tiles tags in your application.

/tags/struts-tiles
/WEB-INF/struts-tiles.tld



Create layout JSPs.
Our web application layout is divided into four parts: To Banner, Left Navigation Bar, Content Area and Bottom of the page for copy right information. Here is the code for out template (template.jsp):
<%@ page language="java" %>
<%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/struts-tiles.tld" prefix="tiles" %>