[WW-4319] struts2-jquery-plugin custom tag templates broken

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Implemented
• Affects Version/s: 2.3.16.1
• Fix Version/s: 2.3.20

Environment

Struts 2.3.16.1, struts2-jquery-plugin 3.7.0, tomcat v7.0

• Assignee: Lukasz Lenart
• Reporter: Steven James
• Created: 09/Apr/14 14:22
• Updated: 13/Jan/15 11:58
• Resolved: 14/Apr/14 18:58

Description

Hi,
I am developing an application which has been predominantly written with Struts2 version 2.3.15.3 and the struts2-jquery-plugin version 3.6.1.
I have recently upgraded to Struts2 version 2.3.16.1 and struts2-jquery-plugin version 3.7.0.
The application has used the css_xhtml theme throughout, defined in struts.xml.
Since the upgrade, the HTML markup of the struts2-jquery-plugin ( sj: ) components has been adversly affected.
I have debugged the application and found that the issue is caused by the changes made to themes under WW-4145.
The situation appears to be this:
The struts2-jquery-plugin has implemented custom tags for their components and these classes will return the value of 'jquery' in response to the getTheme() method. They do appear to correctly store a 'parentTheme' parameter with the correct value (in my case from the parent form element) of 'css_xhtml'.
The struts2-jquery-plugin custom templates are successfully found on the templates/jquery path, but some of them contain 'include' statements, for example, the datepicker.ftl contains the following snippet:

<#if parameters.parentTheme == 'css_xhtml'>
<#include "/${parameters.templateDir}/css_xhtml/controlheader.ftl" />
</#if>

So, at this point, all is well, the correct controlheader.ftl template for the css_xhtml theme is found and included, however this template (now) contains the following include:

 
<#include "/${parameters.templateDir}/${parameters.expandTheme}/controlheader-core.ftl">

And this is where it starts to go wrong. The

${parameters.expandTheme}

resolves to '~~~jquery' and, after reading the WW-4145 change info, I understand that this will cause the ThemeManager to load the template from the parent theme as defined in the theme.properties file. This, in the case of the struts2-jquery-plugin, is defiend as 'xhtml' and NOT 'css_xhtml' as discovered from the parent form component. Consequently, the wrong controlheader-core.ftl template is included, and the resulting HTML includes incorrect <tr> and <td> tags which ultimately break the page.

Other than hacking the templates, I cannot see a satisfactory way of resolving this problem, so any assistance would be gratefully received.

Thanks
Steve