Question

I am using java, spring mvc and apache tiles in my web application.
I have a layout.jsp and inside I have:

<ul class="section">
    <li class="active"><a href="/search.html">search</a></li>
    <li><a href="/post.html">post</a></li>
    <li><a href="/contact.html">contact</a></li>
    <li class="last" ><a href="/about.html">about</a></li>
</ul>

Which means that in every page I have this ul list.

Assuming the current page is “search.html”, then I need the first li to get the class “active”.
Assuming the current page is “post.html”, then I need the second li to get the class “active”.
And so on.

When clicking on post link for example, I have the controller:

@RequestMapping("/post")
public String showPostPage(Model model) {
    return "post";
}

and in my tiles definition, I have the view “post”:

<definition name="post" extends="base.definition">
    <put-attribute name="title" value="add post"/>
    ....
    ....
</definition>

How can I signal the view to which li it should assign the “active” class?
What is the best way to do it?

Answer 1

I guess you can put a model attribute in the controller and then check it in the view:

model.addAttribute("active", "search");
...
<c:if test="${active == 'search'}">class="active"</c:if>