[TILES-570] Init via listeners and configuring DEFINITIONS_CONFIG via context-param does not work as documented

• Type: Bug
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 3.1.x, 3.0.1, 3.0.2
• Component/s: tiles-core, tiles-servlet
• Labels: DEFINITIONS_CONFIG config, location, tiles.xml,
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: NZa
• Created: 06/Jun/13 22:25
• Updated: 25/Feb/15 00:56

Description

Please see http://tiles.apache.org/tutorial/configuration.html for some docs and go to the section "Load the Tiles listener. Specify it in your web.xml file".

Issue 1:
The following configuration is invalid because org.apache.tiles.web.startup.TilesListener does not exist anymore:

<listener>
<listener-class>org.apache.tiles.web.startup.TilesListener</listener-class>
</listener>

Issue 2:
Because of Issue 1 I have chosen to use the org.apache.tiles.web.startup.simple.SimpleTilesListener for starting the Tiles engine (see http://tiles.apache.org/framework/config-reference.html):

<listener>
<listener-class>org.apache.tiles.web.startup.simple.SimpleTilesListener</listener-class>
</listener>

According to the docs this should be possible:

<context-param>
<param-name>
org.apache.tiles.impl.BasicTilesContainer.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG
</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/classes/tiles.xml</param-value>
</context-param>

But org.apache.tiles.impl.BasicTilesContainer.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG does not exist (it was mentioned to be deprecated in older versions of Tiles!).

Issue 3:
Because of issue 2 I used org.apache.tiles.definition.DefinitionsFactory.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG:

<context-param>
<param-name>
org.apache.tiles.definition.DefinitionsFactory.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG
</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/classes/tiles.xml</param-value>
</context-param>

But that does also not allow to load the custom tiles.xml file.

Issue 4:
I checked sources and found this in org.apache.tiles.factory.BasicTilesContainerFactory (tiles-core-3.0.1.jar):

/**

• Returns a list containing the resources to be parsed. By default, it returns a
• list containing the resource at "/WEB-INF/tiles.xml".
• @param applicationContext The Tiles application context.
• @return The resources.
• @since 2.1.1
  */
  protected List<ApplicationResource> getSources(ApplicationContext applicationContext) { List<ApplicationResource> retValue = new ArrayList<ApplicationResource>(1); retValue.add(applicationContext.getResource("/WEB-INF/tiles.xml")); return retValue; }

As you can see "/WEB-INF/tiles.xml" is hard coded. That's why using the context-param has no influence at all. The only valid location is "/WEB-INF/tiles.xml" and that's it.

Would be great if this would be fixed in one of the next releases.

Also see the docs here:
http://tiles.apache.org/config-reference.html#org.apache.tiles.impl.BasicTilesContainer.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG