~~ $Id: pages.apt 1310865 2012-04-07 21:01:22Z nlebas $
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         -----------
         Creating Tiles Pages
         -----------

Creating and using Tiles pages

  After installing and learning some of Tiles concepts, it is time to create
  some pages. Here you will find the steps to create reusable Tiles pieces and
  complete pages.

* Create a template

  Let's take the <<classic layout>> page structure:

[../../images/tiled_page.png] The "classic layout", a typical structure of a web
page.

  Create a JSP page that acts as this layout and place it under
  <<</layouts/classic.jsp>>> file.

-------------------------------
<%@ taglib uri="http://tiles.apache.org/tags-tiles" prefix="tiles" %>
<html>
  <head>
    <title><tiles:getAsString name="title"/></title>
  </head>
  <body>
	<table>
      <tr>
        <td colspan="2">
          <tiles:insertAttribute name="header" />
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>
          <tiles:insertAttribute name="menu" />
        </td>
        <td>
          <tiles:insertAttribute name="body" />
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td colspan="2">
          <tiles:insertAttribute name="footer" />
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  </body>
</html>
-------------------------------

  This template has five attributes: <<<title>>> (of <<<string>>> type),
  <<<header>>>, <<<menu>>>, <<<body>>> and <<<footer>>>.

* Create the composing pages

  In this phase, you have to create four JSP pages, that will take place of
  <<<header>>>, <<<menu>>>, <<<body>>> and <<<footer>>> attributes in the
  previously created template.

  You can put everything you want in this pages, they are just a test.

* Create a definition

  By default, the definition file is <<</WEB-INF/tiles.xml>>>. If you're using <<<CompleteAutoloadTilesListener>>>,
  tiles will use any file in the webapp that matches <<</WEB-INF/tiles*.xml>>> or any file in the classpath that matches
  <<</META-INF/tiles*.xml>>>; if several are found, it will merge them together.  
  
  But for now, let's stick to the default and create the <<</WEB-INF/tiles.xml>>> file, with a definition
  as described in {{{./concepts.html}concepts}}:

------------------------------------
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<!DOCTYPE tiles-definitions PUBLIC
       "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Tiles Configuration 3.0//EN"
       "http://tiles.apache.org/dtds/tiles-config_3_0.dtd">
<tiles-definitions>
  <definition name="myapp.homepage" template="/layouts/classic.jsp">
    <put-attribute name="title" value="Tiles tutorial homepage" />
    <put-attribute name="header" value="/tiles/banner.jsp" />
    <put-attribute name="menu" value="/tiles/common_menu.jsp" />
    <put-attribute name="body" value="/tiles/home_body.jsp" />
    <put-attribute name="footer" value="/tiles/credits.jsp" />
  </definition>
</tiles-definitions>
------------------------------------

* Render the definition

  After creating the definition, you can render it:

  * by using the <<<\<tiles:insertDefinition /\>>>> tag, inserting it in a JSP
  page:

-------------------------------------
<%@ taglib uri="http://tiles.apache.org/tags-tiles" prefix="tiles" %>
<tiles:insertDefinition name="myapp.homepage" />
-------------------------------------

  * in other cases, you can render directly in the response, by using the Tiles
  container:

-----------------------------------
TilesContainer container = TilesAccess.getContainer(
        request.getSession().getServletContext());
container.render("myapp.homepage", request, response);
-----------------------------------

  * by using {{{../advanced/utils.html}Rendering Utilities}} provided by Tiles. For instance,
  if you've configured <<<TilesDispatchServlet>>>, you can render the definition above by
  requesting <<<http://example.com/webapp/myapp.homepage.tiles>>>.

  * by using a supporting framework. See
  {{{../integration/index.html}Integrations}} for a list of supporting
  frameworks.
