Can Tiles provide highly configurable UI?

[Anton Pussep <an...@pussep.de>]

My company started to implement a framework that will allow us to build
up highly customizable layouts, based on components,
description/configuration files and parameters. The objective is it to
allow every customer to have an own layout, such that we can make our
service appear in the same layout as our customer's website. The
business logic and content remain, just the presentation should be
different for every user.

Today I read about Tiles and at the first glance it seems like it is
meant just for such purposes. Do you think that Tiles is flexible and
powerful enough, such that for any customer we can provide any layout he
might want us to adopt to? Is there any working example out there using
multiple layouts? So far I just came across simple examples using just
one layout and I cannot assess myself if this framework is powerful
enough. I would be very helpful if you could provide me some information
on that issue.

Best,
Anton

Re: Can Tiles provide highly configurable UI?

[Anton Pussep <an...@pussep.de>]

> In particular, when you say "different layout for different customers"
> do you mean different "customer types (roles)" or one customer-one
> layout (just like in MyYahoo)?

It's rather the first one. MyYahoo is very nice, but displaying
different components is not enough. Our customers are not the users, the
users are our customer's customers. The customers link from their pages
to our service's pages, but they want out service to have the same
appearance as their own website. Therefore the view must be able to
imitate any possible layout out there. I think it requires a very
sophisticated framework, that's why I am so skeptical if anything can do it.

> In the first case, you can take a look to Dimensions:
> http://mutidimensions.sourceforge.net/
> In the trunk of the SVN repository there is a to-be-cleaned-up version
> of Dimensions that can work together with Tiles 2 (the released
> versions work only with Struts-Tiles).

Thank you very much for the link, I will take a look at it right now.

Thanks for the fast reply!

Best,
Anton

Re: Struts2 - Tomcat - Default page

[Martin Uhlir <st...@seznam.cz>]

Thanks a lot for instant reply and sorry for my mistake with wrong forum.

Martin



Ray Clough wrote:
> The welcome page needs to be a physical file, which can forward to a 
> 'welcome' action.  You cannot start off with an action, you must start 
> with a page, which may never be displayed if it forwards to some action.
> 
> This question really should be in the struts users group, not the tiles 
> group.
> 
> Ray Clough
> 
> 
> 
> Martin Uhlir wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have following problem with the default page in a directory. I've 
>> allready spent too much time with this problem but haven't found any 
>> solution..
>>
>>
>> My application is at http://localhost/app/
>>
>> When I go to http://localhost/app/index.do everything works fine 
>> because  my actions are configured for ".do" suffix.
>>
>> But problem is when I only go to http://localhost/app/
>> Because there is no "index.do" file in the directory (this is 
>> configured as an action), so I only recive, that the resource is not 
>> available. I don't understand why, I have "index.do" in the
>> <welcome-file-list>
>>   <welcome-file>index.do</welcome-file>
>> </welcome-file-list>
>>  in web.xml, so I would expect that when I don't specify the "file" 
>> tomcat should serve this "index.do" file to the struts framework, but 
>> it apparently doesn't.. It only looks for it in the file system (where 
>> no such file exists)..
>>
>> Has someone any idea, how to solve it??
>>
>> Thanks
>> Martin
>>
>>
> 

Re: Struts2 - Tomcat - Default page

[Ray Clough <rc...@kamakuraco.com>]

The welcome page needs to be a physical file, which can forward to a 
'welcome' action.  You cannot start off with an action, you must start 
with a page, which may never be displayed if it forwards to some action.

This question really should be in the struts users group, not the tiles 
group.

Ray Clough



Martin Uhlir wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have following problem with the default page in a directory. I've 
> allready spent too much time with this problem but haven't found any 
> solution..
>
>
> My application is at http://localhost/app/
>
> When I go to http://localhost/app/index.do everything works fine 
> because  my actions are configured for ".do" suffix.
>
> But problem is when I only go to http://localhost/app/
> Because there is no "index.do" file in the directory (this is 
> configured as an action), so I only recive, that the resource is not 
> available. I don't understand why, I have "index.do" in the
> <welcome-file-list>
>   <welcome-file>index.do</welcome-file>
> </welcome-file-list>
>  in web.xml, so I would expect that when I don't specify the "file" 
> tomcat should serve this "index.do" file to the struts framework, but 
> it apparently doesn't.. It only looks for it in the file system (where 
> no such file exists)..
>
> Has someone any idea, how to solve it??
>
> Thanks
> Martin
>
>

Struts2 - Tomcat - Default page

[Martin Uhlir <st...@seznam.cz>]

Hi,

I have following problem with the default page in a directory. I've 
allready spent too much time with this problem but haven't found any 
solution..


My application is at http://localhost/app/

When I go to http://localhost/app/index.do everything works fine because 
  my actions are configured for ".do" suffix.

But problem is when I only go to http://localhost/app/
Because there is no "index.do" file in the directory (this is configured 
as an action), so I only recive, that the resource is not available. I 
don't understand why, I have "index.do" in the
<welcome-file-list>
   <welcome-file>index.do</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
  in web.xml, so I would expect that when I don't specify the "file" 
tomcat should serve this "index.do" file to the struts framework, but it 
apparently doesn't.. It only looks for it in the file system (where no 
such file exists)..

Has someone any idea, how to solve it??

Thanks
Martin

Re: Can Tiles provide highly configurable UI?

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

2007/7/25, Anton Pussep <an...@pussep.de>:
> One more question just came into my mind. What about frames, can Tiles
> and/or Dimensions deal with frames?

Sure! An attribute (i.e. a piece of a page) can be also a frame in a frameset.

Antonio

Re: Can Tiles provide highly configurable UI?

[Anton Pussep <an...@pussep.de>]

One more question just came into my mind. What about frames, can Tiles
and/or Dimensions deal with frames?

Re: Can Tiles provide highly configurable UI?

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

2007/7/25, Anton Pussep <an...@pussep.de>:
> My company started to implement a framework that will allow us to build
> up highly customizable layouts, based on components,
> description/configuration files and parameters. The objective is it to
> allow every customer to have an own layout, such that we can make our
> service appear in the same layout as our customer's website. The
> business logic and content remain, just the presentation should be
> different for every user.
>
> Today I read about Tiles and at the first glance it seems like it is
> meant just for such purposes. Do you think that Tiles is flexible and
> powerful enough, such that for any customer we can provide any layout he
> might want us to adopt to? Is there any working example out there using
> multiple layouts? So far I just came across simple examples using just
> one layout and I cannot assess myself if this framework is powerful
> enough. I would be very helpful if you could provide me some information
> on that issue.

The answer is "yes" :-) You can decide how you want to create your own
pages (in Tiles terms they are called "definitions") by overriding the
DefinitionsFactory:
http://tiles.apache.org/tutorial/extension/points.html
In particular, when you say "different layout for different customers"
do you mean different "customer types (roles)" or one customer-one
layout (just like in MyYahoo)?
In the first case, you can take a look to Dimensions:
http://mutidimensions.sourceforge.net/
In the trunk of the SVN repository there is a to-be-cleaned-up version
of Dimensions that can work together with Tiles 2 (the released
versions work only with Struts-Tiles).

HTH
Antonio