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5 Minute Quickstart

SiteMesh elminates all boiler plate code and dramatically increases maintainability and productivity.

Let's get running in a few simple steps.

Step 1 - Set up a Java Application Server

If you don't already have an applicaiton server, you can set one up easy using Gradle.

Let's start with by creating a folder to contain our app:

mkdir example
cd example

You can get up and running by installing Gradle then placing the following build.gradle file in the example folder.

plugins {
    id 'war'
    id "org.gretty" version "4.0.3"
}

gretty.contextPath = '/'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

Step 2 - Drop in the SiteMesh jar.

Download sitemesh-3.2.0-M2.jar and place it in the example/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/lib folder.

Step 3 - Create your first decorator.

A decorator is adds all the boilerplate code to an html page. This could be for adding an overall theme, analytics, global javascript, to any page or group of pages. A decorator can be static or dynamic content. It can use any templating system.

Let's start with a static one. We will create a decorator that add bootstrap to our webpages.

We then add <sitemesh:write> tags to specify where we want specific parts of the page placed. By convention, all decorators go into the example/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/decorators folder, but this can be changed later by adding a sitemsh3.xml file.

bootstrap.html

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <title><sitemesh:write property="title" /></title>
    <link href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" integrity="sha384-9ndCyUaIbzAi2FUVXJi0CjmCapSmO7SnpJef0486qhLnuZ2cdeRhO02iuK6FUUVM" crossorigin="anonymous">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/font/bootstrap-icons.css">
    <sitemesh:write property="head"/>
</head>
<body>
    <div class="container">
        <sitemesh:write property="body" />
        <footer>A typical boilerplate footer.</footer>
    </div>
    <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js" integrity="sha384-geWF76RCwLtnZ8qwWowPQNguL3RmwHVBC9FhGdlKrxdiJJigb/j/68SIy3Te4Bkz" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
</body>
</html>

Step 4 - Create a Hello World page.

Place the following simple file in the example/src/main/webapp folder. All we need to use the decorator we just created is to just declare a <meta tag in the page <head>

index.html

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Hello World</title>
    <meta name="decorator" content="bootstrap.html" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Hello World!</h1>
    <div class="content">This is a plain html page. or is it?</div>
  <body>
</html>

Step 5 - Run the server either on Tomcat (tomcatRun) or Jetty (jettyRun).

gradle jettyRun

And see your index.html transformed: https://localhost:8080/

Step 6 (Optional) - Clean up

Since you are using Gradle, you don't even need the jar. Go ahead and delete the example/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/lib folder and add the folloing block to the end of your build.gradle

dependencies {
    implementation 'org:sitemesh:sitemesh:3.2.0-M2'
}

and gradle will handle downloading SiteMesh and placing it in the right folder.

Summary

You have just witneesed the power of decorators in how they eliminate boilerplate code, but SiteMesh is capable of so much more. Decorators can transform anything and you can configure SiteMesh to apply decorators outside of the web page using path mappings, request attribures, or even based on specific content type. Read the documentation for more information.