Question

The Header section (Apache Tiles Attribute) is shared by several views. It has a form that expects an Object when the page is loaded and complains if the Object is missing. At the moment I am placing the Object in a Model and passing it to the View using the Controller every time I create a view that inherits this layout.

This approach seems rather tedious as i have repeated lines all over the Controller. I’d like to be able to add it once and be done with.

I am not too familiar with Apache Tiles there maybe a simple solution that I am not aware of.

Looking for some helpful tips.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use the HandlerInterceptorAdapter class and the postHandle method to achieve something like that. By cons, you will need to define a rule that will help you to know when the object need to be add to the model, it can be the path or something in the url, it depends on how your template is organized. Here an example of an interceptor that is doing something like that.

The interceptor defenition :

<mvc:interceptors>
    <bean class="your.package.HeaderModelInterceptor"/>
</mvc:interceptors>

The interceptor class :

public class HeaderModelInterceptor extends HandlerInterceptorAdapter {

    @Override
    public void postHandle(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, Object handler,
        ModelAndView modelAndView) throws Exception {

        // Check if you need to add the object
        if (Your rule) {
            modelAndView.addObject("headerObject", headerObject);
        }

        super.postHandle(request, response, handler, modelAndView);
    }
}