Spring boot can not find jsp views

Question

Helo everyone! I completed my Spring based web app and then started to rebuild it to Spring boot because it gives me ability to use embedded jetty. At the moment I got some problem - Spring boot can not find (resolve) jsp views. So when I run my app - I get the error in browser:

Here is my web app on github - so you can just look at files and find the reason.

Help me please!

P.S. Yes I used @ResourceImport because I don't know how to rewrite the existing spring configuration xml files to java-based config files but you may show me HOW to do that in your answer.

P.P.S. And for some reason the target directory does not contain WEB-INF and it's content folders after compiling. May be this is the reason but I don,t know how to solve it!

Solution 1

I checkout-ed your code from github and managed to deploy into embedded Tomcat 8.0.3 and standalone Tomcat 8.0.x.

I will just go through the steps for embedded Tomcat instead of Jetty(as I have not figured out the Jetty configuration fully yet).

There are two things that you could do

1. Copy your webapps into the following location without the s, e.g. /dvdexchange-spring-boot/src/main/webapp

2. Modify slightly your pom.xml, e.g. below

3. The final outcome as below

-

UPDATE:

IngeniousTom,

I was not able to make it work in embedded Jetty, the furthest point I could reach after struggling to add numerous Maven Jetty jar libraries as shown below

This is actually a known issue and I do not see how this can be solved without any hackish way.

If you read in the github link, there is numerous discussion between Spring-Boot and Jetty camps.

The bottom line of the discussion is that Spring-Boot does not support yet Jsp in embedded Jetty as their standard but have plans in future.

My recommendation is not to use Jsp or use other than Jetty as your embedded container.

Solution 2

JSPs in executable JARs are not officially supported by Spring Boot, this is one of the known JSP limitations. Also, Spring Boot supports JSPs in embedded Jetty as of 1.4.0.RC1, not before.

Right now you can solve this by using Spring Boot 1.4+ and packaging your application as an executable WAR. You'll be able to deploy your app as a regular WAR, run it with java -jar app.war and have a nice development experience - all of this with standard JSPs.

Maybe you'll find tricks to work around those limitations, but keep in mind that those often rely on container-specific behavior that aren't supported by the servlet spec. So at best, this behavior will be inconsistent between containers - and it's certainly possible that containers may change their behavior at any time.

If you really want to package your app as an executable JAR, then the best approach is not to use JSPs and pick a proper template engine.

Comments

[IngeniousTom]

So does it mean that if I want to use jsp in my web app then I can't use embedded jetty? I really need them both in my project. Could you give any solution?

[Brian Clozel]

You can package your project as a WAR and even run it as an executable WAR. See spring boot reference doc

[IngeniousTom]

Thank you for detailed answer but does 1st way allow me to use embedded jetty with spring boot?

[IngeniousTom]

Thank you but jetty is nessesary for my project.

[IngeniousTom]

JAR is not nessesary, I can go with WAR. But what should I do with my viewResolver configuration and folder stucture? Have a look at my repository on github to answer (there is the link in my question). Thanks in advance!

[Brian Clozel]

Take a look at this example: github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/tree/master/…

[IngeniousTom]

I did how you said but it does not work. Have a look at my dispatcherServlet.xml should I change something there? (The github link is in my question)

[IngeniousTom]

I downloaded that source code and opened in my IntelliJ IDEA. When I run it I get error org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreExcepti‌​on: Failed to parse configuration class [sample.jetty.jsp.SampleJettyJspApplication]; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: Failed to introspect annotated methods on class org.springframework.boot.web.support.SpringBootServletInitia‌​lizer

[IngeniousTom]

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

[granadaCoder]

Here is another point I think. But it is the opposite of what you discovered? from docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/… "Do not use the src/main/webapp directory if your application is packaged as a jar. Although this directory is a common standard, it works only with war packaging, and it is silently ignored by most build tools if you generate a jar."