sitemesh and spring MVC decorator pattern problems

Question

I have sitemesh with spring working, this is the configuration: decorator.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<decorators defaultdir="/styles">
    <excludes>
        <pattern>/exclude.jsp</pattern>
        <pattern>/exclude/*</pattern>
    </excludes>
    <decorator page="application/themeManager/theme.jsp" name="dos">
        <pattern>/*</pattern>
    </decorator>
</decorators>

And this is my web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<web-app 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"
    version="2.4">

    <!-- The master configuration file for this Spring web application -->
    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>
            /WEB-INF/config/web-application-config.xml
        </param-value>
    </context-param>

    <!-- Enables Spring Security -->
    <filter>
        <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
        <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
    </filter>

    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>


    <!-- Agregamos el filtro de sitemesh que permite interceptar todas las llamadas que necesitamos -->
    <filter>
        <filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
        <filter-class>com.opensymphony.sitemesh.webapp.SiteMeshFilter</filter-class>
    </filter>
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
        <dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
        <dispatcher>FORWARD</dispatcher>
        <dispatcher>ERROR</dispatcher>
    </filter-mapping>

    <!-- Loads the Spring web application context -->
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>

    <!-- Serves static resource content from .jar files such as spring-faces.jar -->
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>Resources Servlet</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.js.resource.ResourceServlet</servlet-class>
        <load-on-startup>0</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <!-- Map all /resources requests to the Resource Servlet for handling -->
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>Resources Servlet</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/resources/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <!-- The front controller of this Spring Web application, responsible for handling all application requests -->
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value></param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <!-- Map all *.spring requests to the DispatcherServlet for handling -->
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/spring/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
    </welcome-file-list>

</web-app>

This work, but when I change the pattern in decorator.xml for something like

<decorator page="application/themeManager/theme.jsp" name="dos">
    <pattern>/spring/cliente/index</pattern>
</decorator>

it doesn't work, I try a lot of combination and nothing. Then I change the mapping for the spring servlet in the web.xml like this

Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet *.htm

and define a new pattern like this:

<decorator page="application/themeManager/theme.jsp" name="dos">
    <pattern>/cliente/index.htm</pattern>
</decorator>

And it works, so is there any way to make this to work with this mapping for the spring servlet ?

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/spring/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Answer 1

The problem is that SiteMesh uses Request.getServletPath() which in your spring mvc application will return "/spring" for everything. I found this by implementing the com.opensymphony.module.sitemesh.DecoratorMapper interface and using it in place of the normal ConfigDecoratorMapper. Then I was able to inspect the various arguments used to map decorators to requests. Unfortunately, I think this leaves you with the only option being to use the *.html suffix in the DispatcherServelet mapping or some variant thereof.

Another option would be to configure a PageDecoratorMapper and use this tag in your original undecorated page to specify which layout to use:

 <meta name="decorator" content="layoutName" /> 

Although then you void the benefits of url mappings.