Ticket SB-21 [1] seeks to simplify the Tiles taglib API. First, it's
a given that this will break backwards compatibility. You can't
reduce an API without breaking compatibility. But as long as we're
seeing this version of Tiles as a rework, I don't think it's a
problem. Also, I don't think it's a difficult thing to fix in
existing applications. No functionality will be removed, but
redundant hooks to the same functionality will be removed. Finally,
I think this will be one of the greatest improvements to the
usability of Tiles. I'm currently working on a patch to implement this.
Of the attributes that are currently supported by InsertTag, I
believe the following are redundant:
1) attribute, definition, name could all be resolved to name.
2) component, page, and template could all be resolved to template.
In addition the name attribute can be interpreted as either a pointer
to a Tiles definition or attribute or an URL, which essentially makes
it equivalent to page and template. I propose that we reduce all
these meanings down to the "name" attribute. IOW, name can be a
definition name or an attribute name. I suspect this is how Tiles is
being used in 90% of applications anyway. I know that's how I use
it. Further, I propose that we reduce all the URL-based attributes
to the "template" attribute. So if you want to directly insert a
page you must use the template attribute.
The net result is that you can use the insert tag in the following ways:
<tiles:insert name="someName"/>
- to insert a Tiles definition or attribute.
<tiles:insert template="/somepage.jsp"/>
- to insert a URL.
I'm not really sure what the use of the beanName and beanProperty
values are, so if someone wants to enlighten me on that, I'd
appreciate it.
Finally, I personally don't see the use for including a
controllerClass or controllerUrl in the insert tag. IMO, if you want
to do something like that you should use the definition tag instead.
I still intend to completely support attributes defined in the tag
body as such:
<tiles:insert name="someDefinition">
<tiles:put name="someAttribute" value="someValue"/>
</tiles:insert>
And the other attributes like flush, ignore, and role will continue
to function as always. Have I left out any major uses of the insert
tag? Does this change remove any functionality that anyone is
currently relying on?
Thanks,
Greg
[1] http://issues.apache.org/struts/browse/SB-21
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