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I have a folder in Spring MVC src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/views that contains my view templates. I want to move it to src/main/java/views (or some other folder outside of src/main/webapp). How do I configure that in Spring MVC?

I see a file src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/spring/appServlet/servlet-context.xml that contains

<beans:property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />

It's obvious from looking at that that I can change it to

<beans:property name="prefix" value="/views/" />

which would put my views in src/main/webapp/views, but I don't see any way to move views out of the src/webapp folder.

In other words, it's ultra clear that value="/" is equivalent to src/main/webapp/, so it seems like I'm limited to putting my view folder inside src/main/webapp.

How in the world do I set my view folder to be outside of src/main/webapp, for example in src/main/foobar!?! No matter what I search on Google/Bing I can't find anything.

EDIT: I tried to use the /../ to achieve it:

<beans:property name="prefix" value="/../java/edu/csus/csc191/views/" />

but that results in a error that says

SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet [appServlet] in context with path [/hp-dsat] threw exception [Request processing failed; nested exception is org.thymeleaf.exceptions.TemplateInputException: Error resolving template "v2_upload", template might not exist or might not be accessible by any of the configured Template Resolvers] with root cause

The said template does exist in src/main/webapp/../java/views which is equivalent to src/main/java/views

kryger
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trusktr
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  • Why do you want/need to? A resource like your views or your view templates that you render belong in the webapp directory of the deployed web app. Furthermore, depending on how your template engine loads the template files, something outside webapp/WEB-INF may not be accesible via the class path – rpmartz Feb 28 '14 at 03:58
  • Why do templates "belong in the webapp directory of the deployed web app"? I'd prefer if my `controllers`, `models`, and `views` directories were all right in the same location, for simplicity sake. A framework should not make that a difficult thing to do (this is my first time using Spring). – trusktr Feb 28 '14 at 04:01
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    Strictly speaking, there's nothing that says they _need_ to be in `webapp` (that I know of). Convention, backed by the Servlet specification, says they really should be. See this answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19786142/what-is-web-inf-used-for-in-a-java-web-application. While I can't think of any reason actually preventing you from doing this, I don't know that many would recommend doing so for convenience's sake. Additionally, depending on where you put them, you could have to modify the container's `classpath` to read them. All more trouble than it's worth, IMO. – rpmartz Feb 28 '14 at 11:10

3 Answers3

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As you are using Thymeleaf this is easy to achive. I'm not sure if there is a similar solution for Jsps.

All you need to do is change (or add) a template resolver. Thymeleaf currently supports directly the ServletContextTemplateResolver and a ClassLoaderTemplateResolver (and if I remember correctly also a FilepathTemplateResolver).

So what you want in your case is the ClassLoaderTemplateResolver declared in the TemplateEngine:

<beans:bean id="classLoaderTemplateResolver"
    class="org.thymeleaf.templateresolver.ClassLoaderTemplateResolver">
    <beans:property name="prefix" value="views/" />
    <beans:property name="suffix" value=".html" />
    <beans:property name="templateMode" value="HTML5" />
    <beans:property name="characterEncoding" value="UTF-8" />
    <beans:property name="cacheable" value="${thymeleaf.template.cacheable}" />
    <beans:property name="order" value="0" />
</beans:bean>

<beans:bean class="org.thymeleaf.spring3.dialect.SpringStandardDialect"
    id="thymeleafSpringDialect" />

<beans:bean id="templateEngine" class="org.thymeleaf.spring3.SpringTemplateEngine">
    <beans:property name="templateResolvers">
        <beans:set>
            <beans:ref bean="classLoaderTemplateResolver" />
        </beans:set>
    </beans:property>
</beans:bean>
Martin Frey
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  • I'm trying to put view templates in `src/main/java/views`. It seems like your example will place templates in `src/webapp/views`. Can I in fact place them in `src/main/java/views`? – trusktr Mar 03 '14 at 05:55
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    The ClassLoaderTemplateResolver resolves against the classpath. Every "file" under the src/main/java folder is in the classpath. The property "prefix" in the configuration is the "package name" where thymeleaf will look for templates, so the src/main/java/views folder is correct – Martin Frey Mar 06 '14 at 09:12
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    Actually i just checked. The template should not be in src/main/java but src/main/resources. Maven will merge these. – Martin Frey Mar 06 '14 at 09:54
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Normally on application build to war it will look for components in src/main/webapp, You can change this using maven custom project structure.

How to configure custom maven project structure

It is better to keep the view components in WEB-INF because it is not publicly accessible.

Community
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RPaul
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  • Reading that Q/A you linked to makes me dislike maven if it's really that inflexible. This is my first time working on a project involving maven. – trusktr Mar 03 '14 at 05:51
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I think, you can not do it, because putting views out of webapp folder means, you are putting your web application component out of the application root, because src/main/webapp is the root of your web application.

Web servers always deploy only web application components within web application root. If you put views out of webapp, then web server will not deploy it.

Let me correct if I am wrong.

Amreesh Tyagi
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