Components web site has moved to new web sites :
(main) http://www.lifl.fr/~dumoulin/components
(mirror) http://www.geocities.com/cedricdumoulin/components
Please, update your bookmarks, as the old site will stop soon.
Cedric
For those who are new to struts-dev, Components proposal can be seen as an extension to template proposal. It is fully compatible with David Geary's JSP Templates implementation (except attribute 'role', but it is in TODO list).
Components Concepts :
- A component extends the Template concept by adding new features.
- A component is a JSP page that can be inserted in any JSP pages, and that can take "parameters" (String, URLs, List, ...).
- If well defined, components can be reused across pages.
- Can propose "library" of reusable components.
- With Components, you can easilly build portal pages :
- Define Components that will make your portal
- Assemble Components in a list fashion (see the Components Documentation as example)
- With Components, you can easilly build menu : just pass a lists of items to show, and list of links to a Component that will do the job.
- Define your own Components taking parameters (simple or list), and doing what you want
- Compatible with Struts JSP Templates
- A template is a page made of components ...
- Templates can be defined in a centralized file (see Components Instances)
- You fix some parameters of your component (like URLs of header and footer, title), and you got an instance .
- Central definition of instances in an XML file.
- An instance can inherit from another instance. This allows to define a main instance , with fixed header, title, body, footer and menu, and let other instances inherit from it, just overiding requested parameters (usually body and title).
- A "forward" in struts-config file can specify an instance as target.
- It is possible to have multiple localized copies of the same component, and load appropriate one according to the Locale.
