So here is a simple example just so we can compare how things differ in HTML versus JSP, does remind me of JSF / Viewlets to be honest.
1. Let start with what our simple project looks like in IntelliJ
2. The web.xml is defined as follows
<web-app version="2.4"
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
<display-name>Spring MVC Application</display-name>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>mvc-dispatcher</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>mvc-dispatcher</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>
3. The spring context XML is defined as follows
WEB-INF/mvc-dispatcher-servlet.xml
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">
<context:component-scan base-package="pivotal.au.pas.springapp.mvc"/>
<bean id="templateResolver"
class="org.thymeleaf.templateresolver.ServletContextTemplateResolver">
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/resources/templates/" />
<property name="suffix" value=".html" />
<property name="templateMode" value="HTML5" />
</bean>
<bean id="templateEngine"
class="org.thymeleaf.spring3.SpringTemplateEngine">
<property name="templateResolver" ref="templateResolver" />
</bean>
<bean class="org.thymeleaf.spring3.view.ThymeleafViewResolver">
<property name="templateEngine" ref="templateEngine" />
</bean>
</beans>
4. Now the PeopleController.java class looks just like it would when rendering a JSP page view and so it should all we have done here is change what the view page will be which in this case is HTML itself. I have created some mock up data , rather then connecting to a RDBMS here.
package pivotal.au.pas.springapp.mvc;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import pivotal.au.pas.springapp.beans.Person;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
@Controller
public class PeopleController
{
private static List<Person> people = null;
static
{
people = new ArrayList<Person>();
people.add(new Person(1, "pas"));
people.add(new Person(2, "lucia"));
people.add(new Person(3, "lucas"));
people.add(new Person(4, "siena"));
}
@RequestMapping("/showallpeople")
public String showallpeople(Model model)
{
model.addAttribute("people", people);
return "people";
}
}
5. The view page is just a HTML page as follows
WEB-INF/resources/templates/people.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
<head>
<title>Spring MVC with Thymeleaf - All people</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
</head>
<body>
<h2> Spring MVC with Thymeleaf - All people </h2>
<table border="1">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Id#</th>
<th>Name</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr th:each="var : ${people}">
<td th:text="${var.id}"></td>
<td th:text="${var.name}"></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br />
<hr />
<br />
<address>
<a href="mailto:papicella@gopivotal.com">Pas Apicella</a>
</address>
</body>
</html>
6. So here is a simple JSP page as the entry page, could of been a HTML page.
index.jsp
<%@ page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8" language="java" %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Spring MVC with Thymeleaf</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Spring MVC with Thymeleaf</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="/greeting">Greeting</a></li>
<li><a href="/showallpeople">Show All People</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<br />
<address>
<a href="mailto:papicella@gopivotal.com">Pas Apicella</a>
</address>
</body>
</html>
7. Run index.jsp
8. Finally when run and I click on "Show All People" link we get display as follows
More Information
http://spring.io/guides/gs/serving-web-content/
http://www.thymeleaf.org/index.html
