1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
|
<html>
<head>
<title>SiteMesh Overview</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="sitemesh, opensymphony, decorator, decoration, framework, layout, consistent look and feel, integration, java, j2ee" />
<meta name="description" content="Opensymphony SiteMesh - Web-page layout and decoration framework and web-application integration framework to aid in creating large sites consisting of many pages for which a consistent look/feel, navigation and layout scheme is required." />
</head>
<body>
<table align="right" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="border: 1 black solid;">
<tr>
<td width="180" bgcolor="#eeeeee">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1861005512">
<img align=left width=111 height=140 alt="JSP Site Design" border="0" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1861005512.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg"></a>
<small>SiteMesh is featured in a chapter of <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1861005512">Professional JSP Site Design</a></b>.</small>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="180" bgcolor="#eeeeee">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471463620/qid=1061085068/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-7730642-5726207?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">
<img align="left" width="111" height="140" alt="Java Open Source Programming : with XDoclet, JUnit, WebWork, Hibernate" border="0" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0471463620.01._PE30_PI_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg"></a>
<small>SiteMesh is featured in a chapter of <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471463620/qid=1061085068/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-7730642-5726207?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">Java Open Source Programming</a></b>.</small>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><i>You can also start by reading Will Iverson's <a
href="http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2004/03/11/sitemesh.html">Introduction
to SiteMesh</a> over at java.net or skip all this and <a href="download.html">download SiteMesh right away</a>.</i></p>
<h4>What Is It?</h4>
<ul>
<li><p>SiteMesh is a web-page layout and decoration framework and web-
application integration framework to aid in creating large sites
consisting of many pages for which a consistent look/feel, navigation
and layout scheme is required.</p></li>
<li><p>SiteMesh intercepts requests to any static or dynamically
generated HTML page requested through the web-server, parses the page,
obtains properties and data from the content and generates an
appropriate final page with modifications to the original. This is based
upon the well-known <i><a
href="http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GangOfFour">GangOfFour</a> Decorator</i>
design pattern.</p></li>
<li><p>SiteMesh can also include entire HTML pages as a <b>Panel</b>
within another page. This is similar to a Server-Side Include, except
that the HTML document will be modified to create a visual window (using
the document's <b>Meta-data</b> as an aid) within a page. Using this
feature, <i>Portal</i> type web sites can be built very quickly and
effectively. This is based upon the well-known <i><a
href="http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GangOfFour">GangOfFour</a> Composite</i>
design pattern.</p></li>
<li><p>SiteMesh is built using Java 2 with Servlet, JSP and XML
technologies. This makes it ideal for use with J2EE applications, however it
can be integrated with server-side web architectures that are not Java based
such as CGI (Perl/Python/C/C++/etc), PHP, Cold Fusion, etc...</p></li>
<li><p>SiteMesh is very extensible and is designed in a way in which it is
easy to extend for custom needs. </p></li>
</ul>
<h3>The Problem</h3>
<p>There are many web application platforms that are in common use, and even
more frameworks. Typically, a web-application is built for a specific
framework on a specific platform (e.g. using custom JSP tag-libraries on the
J2EE platform, a custom Perl collaboration API using CGI, or a pre-written
application using PHP). A web-site may usually consist of many web-
applications built with a variety of technologies.</p>
<p>However, while individually each of these web-applications may look and
perform as expected, they are often hard to integrate with the page layout
of the existing site and can often end up isolated, attached to the site
merely by a hyperlink. </p>
<p>The most common reason for this is if a site is a mixture of custom
developed pages/applications and pre-written 'out-of-the-box' software. This
software may not be configurable enough to be given the desired look and
feel of the rest of the site, or may be developed using a different
technology to the rest of the site, restricting the developer from using
fragments of the application in other pages of the site.</p>
<p>For example, how many times have you been to a site that has a very
consistent feel all the way through, only to get to the 'search-results'
page and wonder if you were still on the same site? Or how many times have
you seen a framework or web-application that you would love to use on your
site but it will not integrate with what you already have?</p>
<h3>The Solution</h3>
<p>The solution is to work with the HTML that is generated by the various
web-apps instead of hacking at the underlying code (although SiteMesh is
primarily geared towards HTML based sites, it is built in an extensible
manner allowing it to be easily adapted to other mediums such as XML, WML,
PDF, etc). </p>
<p>Each application should produce a plain vanilla version of the HTML
content it wants to display. How this is achieved does not matter - it could
be a static HTML page, XML/XSL transformation, Servlet, CGI script, etc.
</p>
<p>The HTML content is intercepted on its way back to the web-browser where
it is parsed. The contents of the <code><head></code> tag and the
<code><body></code> tag are extracted as well as meta-data properties
of the page (such as title, <code><meta></code> tags and attributes of
the <code><html></code> and <code><body></code> tags).</p>
<p>From the extracted meta-data, an appropriate <b>Decorator</b> is
determined. A decorator can be thought of as a skin for a page - it wraps a
plain looking page with a consistent look and feel. This decorator then
overlays the original page.</p>
<p>To use SiteMesh, it needs to be <a href="install.html">installed,
configured</a> and <a href="decorators.html">have some decorators
created</a>. This process can be completed in minutes, and no coding
experience is required. No changes need to be made to your existing web-
pages/applications!</p>
<h3>Visual Example</h3>
<p>2 pages are produced from different systems (one is a JSP and the other
is a pre-written CGI script). Both pages are parsed and have a decorator
overlaid to produce final page of a consistent look.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="images/overview.gif" border="0"></p>
</body>
</html>
|
