The Apache Project

Quick Install for Testing, Documentation and Tutorial

  • Download Tiles binary distribution
  • Unzip distribution
  • Copy web/tiles-doc.war or web/struts-tiles.war in your web server webapps directory (webapps with Tomcat). Please refer to your webserver manual to know exactly where, or check detailed install.
  • Restart your web server if necessary
  • Point your browser to the root of newly installed web application ( http://localhost:8080/tiles-doc or http://localhost:8080/struts-tiles with tomcat

Quick start and setting of a new application using Tiles

  • Take appropriate tiles-blank.war and copy it in your web server webapps directory
    • tiles-blank.war - Tiles without Struts
    • tiles-blank-struts1.1.war - Tiles with Struts1.1
    • tiles-blank-struts1.0.war - Tiles with latest stable Struts1.0.x
  • These war files are not distributed with Struts binaries.

Prerequisite Software

Copyright : This page is largely inspired from the original Struts installation page. For those familiar with Struts, there is nothing really new.

The Tiles binary distribution needs other software packages installed to operate. You may already have these installed on your system. To build Tiles from source you may need to acquire and install several others. The complete list is as follows:

  • Java Development Kit - You must download and install a Java2 (version 1.2 or later) Java Development Kit implementation for your operating system platform. A good starting point for locating Java Development Kit distributions is http://java.sun.com/j2se.
  • Servlet Container - You must download and install a servlet container that is compatible with the Servlet API Specification, version 2.2 or later, and the JavaServer Pages (JSP) Specification, version 1.1 or later. One popular choice is to download Apache's Tomcat (version 3.1 or later required, version 3.2 or later recommended).
  • XML Parser - Tiles requires the presence of an XML parser that is compatible with the Java API for XML Parsing (JAXP) specification, 1.1 or later. You can download and install the JAXP reference implementation, which is required for building the Tiles source distribution. In Tiles-based web applications, you may replace the reference implementation classes with any other JAXP compliant parser, such as Xerces. See detailed instructions related to the parser in the instructions for building and installing Tiles, below.
  • Ant Build System - If you are building Tiles from the source distribution, you must download and install version 1.3 or later of the Ant build system. This package is also strongly recommended for use in developing your own web applications based on Tiles.
    • If you are using the release version of Ant version 1.3, you will also need to download the "optional.jar" file that contains the implementation of Ant's <style> command.
    • Make sure that the "ant" and "ant.bat" scripts are executable, by adding the $ANT_HOME/bin directory to your PATH environment variable.
  • Servlet API Classes - In order to compile Tiles itself, or applications that use Tiles, you will need a servlet.jar file containing the Servlet and JSP API classes. Most servlet containers include this JAR file. Otherwise, you can get the Servlet API classes distribution from here.
  • Jakarta Commons Packages - Tiles utilizes several packages from the Jakarta Commons Project.If you are utilizing a binary distribution of Tiles, the corresponding JAR files are included in the lib directory. However, if you wish to build Tiles from source, you will need to download and install the following packages:
    • Beanutils (Version 1.0 or later)
    • Collections (Version 1.0 or later)
    • Digester (Version 1.0 or later)
    • Logging (Version 1.0 or later)
  • Xalan XSLT Processor - If you are building Tiles from the source distribution, you will need a version of Xalan to perform XSLT transformations. If you are using the JAXP/1.1 XML parser, you should use the version of xalan.jar shipped with it. Otherwise, download and install version 1.2 of Xalan from here.
  • Struts Framework - If you are planning to use Tiles with Struts, you should download and install Struts from Apache Struts Project. If you have acquired Tiles with the Struts distribution, you don't need to install it again. Tiles can run without Struts. In this case you loose some features.

Install A Tiles Binary Distribution

First, download a binary distribution of Tiles by following the instructions here. Then, make sure you have downloaded and installed the prerequisite software packages described above.

Unpack the Tiles binary distribution into a convenient directory. (If you build Tiles from the source distribution, the result of the build will already be an unpacked binary distribution for you). The distribution consists of the following contents:

  • lib/tiles.jar - This JAR file contains all of the Java classes included in Tiles. It should be copied into the WEB-INF/libdirectory of your web application. WARNING - If you are going to be hosting multiple tiles based applications on the same servlet container, you will be tempted to place the struts.jar file into the shared repository supported by your container. Be advised that this will likely cause you to encounter ClassNotFoundException problems unless all of your application classes are stored in the shared repository.
  • lib/struts1.0/tilesForStruts1.0.jar - Same as before, but for use with Struts1.0.x.
  • lib/tiles.tld - These is the "tag library descriptor" file that describe the custom tags in the Tiles tag libraries. It should be copied into the WEB-INF directory of your web application.
  • webapps/tiles-doc.war or webapps/struts-tiles.war - This is a "web application archive" file containing all of the Tiles documentation found on the Tiles web site (including these pages). You can install this web application on any servlet container compatible with Servlet API 2.2 or later.
  • webapps/tiles-channel.war - Examples using a custom definition factory.
  • webapps/tiles-blank.war - A blank application that can be used as a starting point when you want to develop your own application with Tiles. This blank application doesn't contains neither use Struts. If you also want to use Struts, add struts.jar and related tld files, or choose one of the following applications.
  • webapps/tiles-blank-struts1.1.war - A blank application to use with Struts1.1
  • webapps/tiles-blank-struts1.0.war - A blank application to use with Struts1.0.x

To use Tiles in your own application, you will need to follow these steps:

  • Copy the fileslib/commons-*.jar into the WEB-INF/lib directory of your web application.
  • Copy the file lib/tiles.jar from the Tiles distribution into the WEB-INF/lib directory of your web application.
  • Copy all of the files that match lib/*.tld from the Tiles distribution into the WEB-INF directory of your web application.
  • If you want to use definitions configuration file, you need to initialize the definitions factory. This can be done as follows:
    • Modify the WEB-INF/web.xml file for your web application to use a <servlet> that initializes the factory and catch Struts action forwards to check for definition name. Use the WEB-INF/web.xml file from the Tiles example application for a detailed example of the required syntax.
        <servlet>
           ...
           <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
           <servlet-class>org.apache.struts.tiles.ActionComponentsServlet</servlet-class
           <init-param>
             <param-name>definitions-config</param-name>
             <param-value>/WEB-INF/tiles-config.xml</param-value>
           </init-param>
           ...
      
    • If you don't want to use Struts, use org.apache.struts.tiles.TilesServlet as servlet.
    • Create a configuration file for definitions. Its name must match the one provided before in WEB-INF/web.xml. Several comma separated names can be provided.
  • Modify the WEB-INF/web.xml file of your web application to include the following tag library declarations:
<taglib>
  <taglib-uri>/WEB-INF/tiles.tld</taglib-uri>
  <taglib-location>/WEB-INF/tiles.tld</taglib-location>
</taglib>
  • At the top of each JSP page that will use the Tiles custom tags, add line(s) declaring the Tiles custom tag libraries used on this particular page, like this:
<%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/tiles.tld" prefix="tiles" %>
  • When compiling the Java classes that comprise your application, be sure to include the tiles.jar and commons-*.jar files (copied earlier) on the CLASSPATH that is submitted to the compiler.

Note to Struts 1.0 users :

  • You should use a tiles.jar build with Struts1.0.x.
  • If you have downloaded a Tiles version build with Struts1.0.x, you already have it.
  • Consider to use tilesForStruts1.0.jar located in lib/struts1.0

Note to Struts1.1 users :

  • You should also initialize a TilesRequestProcessor.
  • To do so, add following lines in your struts-config.xml file :
       <controller processorClass="org.apache.struts.tiles.TilesRequestProcessor">
       </controller>
    

Installing Tiles with your servlet container

WARNING - Do NOT add tiles.jar to the classpath of your servlet container in an attempt to avoid placing it in the /WEB-INF/lib directory of each individual web app! Doing so will cause problems with ClassNotFoundException exceptions.

For most containers, you need only to:

  • Copy the WAR files in your Tiles /webapp directory to your containers webapps directory.
  • In some cases, you may need to restart your container if it is running.

Status of various containers

For status of additional containers, please refer to the Struts installation page).

Building Tiles From Source

First, download a source distribution of Tiles from here or from Struts contrib directory. Then, make sure you have downloaded and installed all of the prerequisite software packages described above. You also need the appropriate struts version (1.0.x or 1.1)

To build Tiles, you will need to customize the build process to the details of your development environment as follows:

  • The Tiles source distribution uses a file named build.properties (in the top-level directory of the distribution) to identify the location of external components that Tiles depends on.
  • There is no build.properties file included with the source distribution. However, there is an example file named build.properties.example that you can copy to build.propertiesand then customize.
  • The properties you must configure in build.properties are documented in build.properties.example
  • Tiles build require a Struts library. You can use either a Struts1.0.x or 1.1 struts.jar. The resulting tiles.jar will run with the used struts.jar. You specify the Struts home with struts.home property.

To build a "distribution" version of Tiles, first change your current directory to the directory in which you have unpacked the Tiles source distribution, and (if necessary) create or customize the build.propertiesfile as described above. Then, type:

        ant dist

This command will create a binary distribution of Tiles, in a directory named dist (relative to where you are compiling from). This directory contains an exact replica of the files included in a binary distribution of Tiles, as described in the preceding section.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The tiles.jar, as well as the JAR files from the Jakarta Commons project, must be in your classpath when compiling Tiles. The build.xml provided does this automatically. If you use your development machine to test Tiles application locally, be sure that the tiles.jaris NOT on your classpath when your container is running.