Best way to replace header and footer based on an affiliate ID?

[Neil Aggarwal <ne...@JAMMConsulting.com>]

Hello:

I have a site developed using struts 2 with the tiles 2
plugin.

I would like to use an affiliate-specific header and
footer on the pages if the user comes in from an
affiliate site.

I think I have found two ways so far to do this:

1. When users come into my site from an affiliate,
	make them to a new action path.

	For example, people come in to the site
	right now my a url such as 
	http://jammconsulting.com/myApp/page/home.action

	For an affiliate, they can come in using this
	url:
	http://jammconsulting.com/myApp/affName/home.action

	In my struts.xml, I can have these actions:

      <action name="page/*">
        <result name="success" type="tiles">page.{1}</result>
      </action>

      <action name="affName/*">
        <result name="success" type="tiles">affName.{1}</result>
      </action>

	In my tiles.xml, I can have these defintions:

	<definition name="page.basic" template="/layout.jsp">
        <put-attribute name="header" value="/header.jsp" />
        <put-attribute name="footer" value="/footer.jsp" />
      </definition>
	
      <definition name="page.home" extends="page.basic">
        <put-attribute name="content" value="/home.jsp" />
      </definition>

	<definition name="page.affName" template="/layout.jsp">
        <put-attribute name="header" value="/affName/header.jsp" />
        <put-attribute name="footer" value="/affName/footer.jsp" />
      </definition>
	
      <definition name="affName.home" extends="page.affName">
        <put-attribute name="content" value="/home.jsp" />
      </definition>

2. Use a tiles controller to replace the header and footer
	attributes on the definition containing the layout.

	So, my tiles.xml would have:

	<definition name="page.basic" template="/layout.jsp"
		controllerClass="page.LayoutController">
        <put-attribute name="header" value="/header.jsp" />
        <put-attribute name="footer" value="/footer.jsp" />
      </definition>

	The LayoutController would check if the user came from
	and affiliate and if they did, set the header and footer
	attributes to the correct ones for the affiliate.

Does anyone have a suggestion for the best practices way to
do this?

Thanks,
	Neil

--
Neil Aggarwal, (832)245-7314, www.JAMMConsulting.com
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Re: Best way to replace header and footer based on an affiliate ID?

[Antonio Petrelli <an...@gmail.com>]

2008/4/30 Neil Aggarwal <ne...@jammconsulting.com>:
>  2. Use a tiles controller to replace the header and footer
>         attributes on the definition containing the layout.
>
>         So, my tiles.xml would have:
>
>         <definition name="page.basic" template="/layout.jsp"
>                 controllerClass="page.LayoutController">
>         <put-attribute name="header" value="/header.jsp" />
>         <put-attribute name="footer" value="/footer.jsp" />
>       </definition>
>
>         The LayoutController would check if the user came from
>         and affiliate and if they did, set the header and footer
>         attributes to the correct ones for the affiliate.

Notice that Tiles 2 changed the "controller" concept with the "view
preparer", but essentially it works the same:
http://tiles.apache.org/tutorial/advanced/preparer.html

Anyway, if I was you, I would use your options 1 or 2 only if the
pages are very limited in number.
If they are too many, consider extending UrlDefinitionsFactory, to
centralize the creation of definitions.
For an example, see Dimensions:
http://mutidimensions.sourceforge.net/
In fact, the Tiles 2 version is in the SVN trunk, and probably won't
compile, but at least you will see how it works.

HTH
Antonio