How do I add .jsp headers and footers to my Spring MVC web app?

java model-view-controller jsp web-applications spring-mvc

18,474

I found your question whilst researching :-) Not sure if my solution is <good | bad | a hack | already exists> or if there is a better way but it's working for my current project.

In your myapp-servlet.xml you can extend the viewResolver viewClass with your own implementation:

myapp-servlet.xml

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver"
  p:viewClass="com.my.app.view.JstlView"
  p:prefix="/WEB-INF/views/"
  p:suffix=".jsp"/>

By overriding the renderMergedOutputModel you can force all views to really be a template in which you can define your global layout and then simply <jsp:include/> your partial(s).

JstlView.java

package com.my.app.view;

import java.util.*;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceView;
import javax.servlet.RequestDispatcher;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

public class JstlView extends InternalResourceView {
    @Override
    protected void renderMergedOutputModel(Map<String, Object> model, HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
        String dispatcherPath = prepareForRendering(request, response);

        // set original view being asked for as a request parameter
        request.setAttribute("partial", dispatcherPath.substring(dispatcherPath.lastIndexOf("/") + 1);

        // force everything to be template.jsp
        RequestDispatcher rd = request.getRequestDispatcher("/WEB-INF/views/template.jsp");
        rd.include(request, response);
    }
}

If you look Spring's InternalResourceView.java you'll get a better idea of what Spring is doing when determining what view to use.

template.jsp

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head></head>
<body>
    <header>
        <jsp:include page="header.jsp"/>
    </header>
    <jsp:include page="${partial}"/>
    <footer>
        <jsp:include page="footer.jsp"/>
    </footer>
</body>
</html>

How to obtain request / session / servletcontext attribute in JSP using EL? helped me here with getting the attribute value ${partial} out.

simple_partial.jsp

<p>I'm a partial!</p>

Then in a controller, return the simple_partial view

App.java

package com.my.app.controller;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;

@Controller
@RequestMapping(value="/")
public class App{
    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String index() {
        return "simple_partial";
    }
}

which will get wrapped by the template.jsp and responded out.

18,474

Author by

Xonatron

Matthew Doucette: Co-founder + Board Member, Ignite Labs Game Development Faculty + Faculty Chair, NSCC Truro Campus Xbox MVP, Microsoft Co-founder + Game Producer + Lead Programmer + CEO, Xona Games (Full resume at matthewdoucette.com.)

Updated on June 14, 2022

Comments

Xonatron almost 2 years

How do I add .jsp headers and footers to my Spring MVC web app?

I know there's many different answers, but I would like to know (them all really but more importantly) what is the proper way to do this? I'm just learning Spring and I have a hint the answer lies with HandlerInterceptor. For now, I might just do so .jsp includes. Even with this include solution, could you detail where I would place the headers/footers structurally? Any advice or direction would be great.
Xonatron about 12 years

Any answers not using other people's code? For now I do a simple include for a header and footer.
duffymo about 12 years

Then that's your answer. You don't need anything else from this site.
Xonatron about 12 years

thank you, but my question was much beyond where I was already at. For anyone else reading this, I would still appreciate any input or elaboration.
duffymo about 12 years

I'd recommend looking at the links I provided. Even if you don't want to use "other people's code", you can get insight into how they thought about it.
rmpt over 8 years

clean and simple answer. But what if we want to add some exceptions to it? Say I want to have a login.jsp page without the header/footer, how can we reach that? And I think there's another issue. If we want a partial with some dynamic content passed through ModelAndView, they will not take effect, i.e., in the call stack Controller > Partial > ViewResolver, the data inside the model will be passed into the ViewResolver and reach the template and not the partial view. I do not know if I was clear, but I tried.
andyb over 8 years

Good questions. It's been a while since I wrote this and I can't exactly remember what I did. I think I used rd.forward(requestToExpose, getRequestToExpose(request)) in the JstlView to forward onto another resource. You can also get the path for the request dispatcher with prepareForRendering(getRequestToExpose(request), response). I believe that an @ResponseBody annotated method that does return new ModelAndView(partial, model, modelObject) was correctly reaching the partial. I probably used exposeModelAsRequestAttributes(model, requestToExpose) in my renderMergedOutputModel
andyb over 8 years

I'll try to find some of the code and edit my answer later.
Chizbox over 5 years

are there any updates on this? im also in the same scenario