Table of Contents

Preface
1. Build, deploy and run
Build
With Maven
Using a prepackaged application
Using an IDE
Deploy
Tomcat
GateIn
Liferay
Run
Run modes
How to choose the right run mode
Configuring the run mode
2. Phases
Phases
View phase
Action phase
Resource phase
Interactions
Mapping onto HTTP
View phase
Action phase
Resource phase
3. Controllers
Overview
Request routing
Http request routing
Portlet request routing
Controller phases
View controllers
Action controllers
Resource controllers
Event controllers
Controller classes
Controller life cycle
Controller dispatch
4. Responses
Content responses
Render response
View response
Redirect response
Error response
5. Bridges
Servlet bridge
Juzu servlet
Servlet configuration
Portlet bridge
Juzu portlet
Portlet configuration
6. Inversion of Control
Containers
Inversion Of Control
Beans
Scopes
Qualifiers
Beans in action
Template beans
Controller beans
Application beans
Provider factories
7. Templating
The templating engines
The native template engine
The Mustache template engine
Using templates
Template declaration
Type safe parameters
Expression resolution
8. Templating SPI
Compiling a Groovy template
Type safe URL resolution
Template Service Provider Interface
Template providers
Template stub
Template at work
Qualified template class
9. Taglib
Taglib syntax
Include tag
Decorate / Insert tag
Title tag
Param tag
10. Assets
Asset serving
Asset server
Asset plugin
Application assets
Server assets
External assets
Managing assets programmatically
11. Juzu Servlet Plugin
Servlet class generation
Asset server automatic registration
12. Juzu Portlet Plugin
Portlet class generation
Portlet preferences injection
Resource bundle injection
Building
13. Juzu File Upload Plugin
File upload in an action phase
File upload in a resource phase
14. Juzu Less Plugin
Usage
Building

List of Figures

2.1. Interaction between phases
2.2. View phase
2.3. Action phase
2.4. View phase after action phase
3.1. Life cycle of a controller object
8.1. Compiling a Groovy template
8.2. Template URL resolution during compilation
8.3. index groovy at work
10.1. Using assets in a request

List of Tables

1.1. The predefined descriptors

List of Examples

1.1. Generating an application for the Tomcat server and the Guice injection container
1.2. Generating an application for the Tomcat server and the Spring injection container
1.3. Configuring the dev mode in web.xml
3.1. Declaring a controller route
3.2. Route parameters
3.3. Route parameter matching
3.4. Route parameter matching
3.5. Route priority
3.6. The RequestLifeCycle interface
5.1. The Juzu servlet configuration
5.2. Path mapping configuration
5.3. The Juzu portlet configuration
6.1. Configuring the Spring container in web.xml
6.2. Time provider factory
6.3. Time provider configuration
7.1. Controller URL syntax
7.2. Controller URL with parameters
7.3. Explicit controller URL
7.4. Message syntax
7.5. Using a template
7.6. Returning the generated juzu.Response.Render
7.7. Native template parameter declaration
7.8. Mustache template parameter declaration
7.9. Named bean
7.10. Template parameters
7.11. Named bean
7.12. Template parameters
9.1. Start and end tag syntax
9.2. Empty tag syntax
9.3. The include tag
9.4. The wrapped template
9.5. The decoraring template
9.6. Setting the title
9.7. Declaring a template parameter
9.8. Using the template parameter
10.1. JQuery UI declarative asset configuration
10.2. Declarative relative application asset configuration
10.3. Declarative relative server asset configuration
10.4. External classpath asset configuration
11.1. Juzu servlet generation
12.1. Injecting portlet preferences
12.2. Injecting the portlet resource bundle
14.1. Annotating an application package for processing LESS files
14.2. LESS and Asset plugins in action

Juzu is a web framework based on MVC concepts for developing Portlet applications. Juzu is an open source project developed on GitHub project licensed under the LGPL 2.1 license.

We will see in this chapter how to build and deploy a Juzu application.

Build

Building a Juzu application is usually done in two steps

  • Compile the application to its binary representation

  • Package the application as a war file

Compiling an application requires a few jars to be present on the compilation classpath:

  • The Juzu core jar for the Juzu API

  • The JSR-330 jar for the @Inject API

  • Any Juzu extension jar such as plugins or additinal template engines

After compilation, classes need to be packaged as a web application archive (war) and then deployed in a server. We will show several ways to package a Juzu application.

Note

At the moment Juzu focuses on Maven because it is built with Maven, however that does not mean that Juzu is coupled to Maven, in the future we will provide additional examples or quickstart for alternative build systems.

With Maven

Juzu libraries are deployed in the Maven Central repository, compiling an application with require a few dependencies to find the correct jars.

Using the Juzu Maven bom

The bom is a Juzu artifact that serves the purpose of building and packaging an application:

  1. provide a set of dependencies that will be sufficient for compiling the application using its Maven transitive dependencies

  2. provide a predefined assembly descriptor that creates a war file containing the application classes, resources and libraries

To achieve the first step, we simply declare the following dependency in a Maven artifact:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.juzu</groupId>
  <artifactId>juzu-bom-core</artifactId>
  <version>0.6.2</version>
</dependency>

Assembling the application requires more XML but is very straightforward:

<plugin>
  <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.juzu</groupId>
      <artifactId>juzu-bom-core</artifactId>
      <version>0.6.2</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <goals>
        <goal>single</goal>
      </goals>
      <phase>package</phase>
      <configuration>
        <descriptorRefs>
          <descriptorRef>tomcat-guice</descriptorRef>
        </descriptorRefs>
      </configuration>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

The assembly plugin takes care of packaging the application:

  1. The plugin dependency declares on the juzu-bom-core artifact because it contains the predefined descriptors such as the tomcat-guice descriptor

  2. The goal single of the assembly plugin is executed during the package phase

  3. The predefined descriptor tomcat-guice packages the application for the Tomcat server and with the Guice framework

    1. Any dependency on the application is packaged in WEB-INF/lib

    2. The application classes are copied in WEB-INF/classes

    3. The web application src/main/webapp files are copied to the root of the archive

    4. Specific deployment descriptors may be copied in the war file depending on the predefined descriptor

In this example we used the tomcat-guice predefined descriptor. The bom relies on the Maven Assembly plugin, Juzu provides the predefined assembly descriptors that makes easy to package a Juzu application:

Table 1.1. The predefined descriptors
tomcat gatein liferay
all tomcat gatein liferay
guice tomcat-guice gatein-guice liferay-guice
spring tomcat-spring gatein-spring liferay-spring
cdi tomcat-cdi gatein-cdi liferay-cdi

Note

The predefined assembly descriptor does a similar job to the Maven war packaging but with more flexibility. To achieve the same result, the usage of a war packaging with the overlay feature.

Juzu archetype

The following produces a base Juzu application for Tomcat with the Guice injection container:

Example 1.1. Generating an application for the Tomcat server and the Guice injection container

mvn archetype:generate \
   -DarchetypeGroupId=org.juzu \
   -DarchetypeArtifactId=juzu-archetype \
   -DarchetypeVersion=0.6.2 \
   -DgroupId=org.example \
   -DartifactId=myapp \
   -DpackageName=org.example.myapp \
   -Dversion=1.0.0-SNAPSHOT


The generated application is a quickstart ready to can be customzed for developing more complex applications. The archetype uses the packager described in the previous section.

It is possible to generate the application for a different server and injection container:

Example 1.2. Generating an application for the Tomcat server and the Spring injection container

mvn archetype:generate \
   -DarchetypeGroupId=org.juzu \
   -DarchetypeArtifactId=juzu-archetype \
   -DarchetypeVersion=0.6.2 \
   -DgroupId=org.example \
   -DartifactId=myapp \
   -DpackageName=org.example.myapp \
   -Dversion=1.0.0-SNAPSHOT \
   -DjuzuServer=tomcat \
   -DjuzuInject=spring


Using a prepackaged application

The Juzu distribution contains the Booking and Tutorial applications for GateIn and Liferay servers. They can be used as basis to create applications.

Using an IDE

Juzu uses Annotation Processing Tool to perform many tasks at compilation time. APT is a standard extension of a Java compiler. All Java IDE (Eclipse, Intellij and Netbeans) provide good support for APT, we will show in the section how to configure and uses APT within those IDEs.

IDEs provide also Maven support, we will focus in this section on using APT without the Maven support. Indeed the APT support may work differently when using Maven in your project, the Maven and APT support within IDEs has a dedicated section.

Intellij support

todo

Eclipse support

todo

Netbeans support

todo

Deploy

At the moment the supported (i.e tested) portal servers are

  • Tomcat 6.x and 7.x

  • GateIn 3.2 / 3.3 / 3.4 and 3.5

  • Liferay 6.1

Other server may work but we are not aware of that as it was not tested in other environments.

Tomcat

No specific deployment instruction.

GateIn

GateIn on Tomcat 6/7

No specific deployment instruction.

GateIn on JBoss AS 7

GateIn on JBoss AS7 requires a little modification to do:

Open the file modules/javax/api/main/module.xml and add <path name="javax/annotation/processing"/> among the paths declaration:

<module xmlns="urn:jboss:module:1.1" name="javax.api">
  <dependencies>
    <system export="true">
      <paths>
        <path name="javax/annotation/processing"/>
        ...
      </paths>
    </system>
  </dependencies>
</module>

This configuration exposes the javax.annotation.processing package to the classes seen by Juzu.

Liferay

Liferay has been tested extensively with the Tomcat version, no specific deployment instruction is required.

Run

Run modes

Juzu defines three modes for running an application, called run modes:

  • Production (prod): error reporting is minimal

  • Development (dev): provides verbose error reporting

  • Live (live): allow to develop the application live with verbose error reporting

How to choose the right run mode

  • When you are running an application use the prod run mode

  • When you are developing an application with a build system use the dev run mode

  • When you are live developing an application use the live run mode

Configuring the run mode

Run mode is configured via servlet context parameters, by default the prod mode is enabled:

  • juzu.run_mode : possible values prod, dev or live

  • juzu.src_path : the source path of the source to compile for the live mode

Example 1.3. Configuring the dev mode in web.xml

<context-param>
  <param-name>juzu.run_mode</param-name>
  <param-value>dev</param-value>
</context-param>


Request life cycle is the most important concept to get right when developping a web application, whether it is a Juzu application or not. Juzu maps a request to a phase, in this chapter we will explain the phase concept and its importance.

Phases

Juzu request life cycle is composed of four phases, we will explain three of them in this chapter, the last one will be explained in another chapter of this guide.

  • The view phase : invoke the application to produce markup output aggregated within a page

  • The action phase : invoke the application to process an action

  • The resource phase : invoke the application to produce any kind of output as a full response (i.e not in a page)

During the execution of a phase, parameters are provided by Juzu to execute the phase. Those parameters are set by the application itself, for instance when it creates a link. The scope of the parameters (i.e when the validity of the parameters) depends on the phase.

View phase

The view phase invokes the application for the purpose of creating markup. This phase is indempotent, it means that repeated invocation of the same phase with the same parameters should produce the same markup (supposing than the application does not depend on some other state, like a database that could change over time).

View parameters are associated with the current URL, it means that they are somehow persistent. For instance you interact with an application to change its view parameters on each request and then you interact with another application on the same page: the view parameters will remain the same accross the invocation of the view phase of the application when the second application is used.

Action phase

The action phase invokes the application for processing an action. During the invocation, action parameters are provided and their validity is limited to the current action phase being executed, after they will not be anymore available.

The action phase is not idempotent, invoking several times an action phase could have side effects such as inserting several times the same data in a database.

Juzu does not expect markup returned during this phase, however it provides the opportunity to configure the view parameters of the next view phase.

Resource phase

The resource phase allows the application to produce a web resource such as an image or a full page. When this phase is invoked, a set of resources parameters are provided in the URL producing the resource.

Interactions

Now that we have an overview of the phase, it is time to connect them and explain the interactions between the phases.

Figure 2.1. Interaction between phases

Interaction between phases


  1. An action phase is invoked by an URL produced during a view phase, this URL contains the action parameters

  2. After an action phase a view phase is executed and the view parameters are updated

  3. A resource phase is invoked by anURL produced during a view phase, this URL contains the resource parameters

Mapping onto HTTP

As said before, phases and interactions have a natural mapping with the HTTP protocol. It is worthy to explain it because it will help you to understand fully the interations managed by Juzu.

View phase

View phases are mapped on GET requests:

  • The view phase is idempotent like GET

  • View parameters are identified to query parameters

  • The response returned by a GET request should remain identical for the same parameters

During a view phase, the application produces URL which can invoke any application phase.

Figure 2.2. View phase

View phase


In this example the view phase produce markup parameterized by the color parameter having the red value.

Action phase

Action phase are created from view phase by processing a link that was found in the markup response. The action phase is mapped on POST requests:

  • Both action phases and POST request are not idempotent

  • Action parameters are identified to form parameters

  • Action phase and POST requests should not be invoked more than one time

Figure 2.3. Action phase

Action phase


Now let's update our example and suppose that the application returns markup with a form that invokes an action phase. When the user submits the form it triggers the action phase, which in returns updates the color view parameter of the next view phase to the value blue.

Figure 2.4. View phase after action phase

View phase after action phase


The HTTP redirection will update the browser to show the next view phase with the expected view parameters.

During the action phase, the application configures the parameters of the next view phase. When the invocation of the phase is over, the server redirects the browser (with an HTTP temporary redirection) to the next view phase URL. This URL contains the view parameters. This mechanism is well known as Redirect After Post pattern and is often used to ensure that a POST request is not triggered several times when the refresh button of the browser is used.

Resource phase

Resource phases are trivially mapped on GET request pretty much like a view phase. The main difference is that the resource phase is responsible for managing the entire response instead of just a fragment of the response.

Controllers play an essential role in a Juzu application: they contain the code executed when Juzu processes a request, this chapter provides an in depth study of Juzu controllers.

Overview

Juzu controllers are simply annotated methods of the application, here is the most basic controller declaration:

public class Controller {
  @View public Response.Content index() {
     return Response.render("hello world");
  }
}

The annotation @juzu.View declares a view controller, the name index has a special meaning as it will be used when no other controller is specifed in a Juzu request.

Controller methods can declare parameters for receiving request parameters:

public class Controller {
  @View public Response.Content index(String person) {
     return Response.render("Hello " + person == null ? "world" : person);
  }
}

Like previously, the index controller returns the hello world value when it is called the first time. When the controller is called with the person parameter it returns the hello string personalized with the corresponding parameter value: Juzu use the declared method parameter name to match against the request parameters, in our case the person request parameter.

Any controller class (any class containing at least one controller method) generates a companion class during the compilation of the project. Such companion class extends the original controller class to provider companion methods for the controller method. The companion class has the same name than the original class appended with the _ character:

public class Controller_ {
  public static Dispatch index() { /* Generated code */ }
  public static Dispatch index(String person) { /* Generated code */ }
}

Each index methods generated a corresponding index method companion. When any index method is invoked it returns an juzu.Dispatch object that generates the URL dispatching to the corresponding phase when the toString() method is invoked. When parameters are provided they will be encoded in the generated URL.

@View public Response.Content index() {
  return Response.render("Hello word. <a href='" + Controller_.index("Juzu") + "'>Say hello to Juzu</a>";
}

URL companion methods have the name of the originating method appended with the URL suffix. The method parameter types are the same.

Request routing

During a request, Juzu routes the request to the correct controller method. Previously we have seen that any unmatched view phase request will be handled by the index controller method.

In this section we cover the binding of a controller method to a specific request. This binding is not the same whether you are writing an application that deploys as a servlet or as a portlet.

The main difference between the two environements are the request and responses: servlets interacts with the http protocol whereas the portlets interacts with the portal (which can turns into the WSRP prococol in the case of a remote portlet).

In practice the main difference between servlet and portlet is the routing of the request: with a servlet the controller methods needs to be bound to route.

Http request routing

When Juzu handles an http request it routes this request to a controller based on the request path. Request routing is based on a set of route declarations, each declaration binds a route to a controller method.

Default controller

Before discussing routing configuration, we shall remind the default controller method: the index view controller method of the default controller will handle any unmatched request:

@View
public void index() {
  // Handle unmatched request
}

When the application has a single controller class, the default controller is this controller. When there are more than one controller, there is an ambiguity. In this situation the default controller should be specified in the @Application annotation:

@Application(defaultController = Controller.class)

Declaring a route

The @Route annotation declares the route for a controller with a path and an optional priority:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target({ElementType.METHOD})
public @interface Route {

  /**
   * The route path.
   *
   * @return the route path
   */
  String value();

  /**
   * The route priority.
   *
   * @return the route priority
   */
  int priority() default 0;

}

Controller method should declare an @Route annotation, in practice with http the annotations @View, @Action and @Resource are associated with an @Route annotation.

Example 3.1. Declaring a controller route

@View @Route("/show")
public void show() {
  ...
}


The request /show will be dispatched to the show() method.

Route parameters

Route can declare parameters:

Example 3.2. Route parameters

@View @Route("/show/{id}")
public void show(String id) {
  ...
}


In this example the route parameter id will match the controller method parameter id and a request like /show/123 will invoke the show(String id) method with the 123 value.

Route parameter pattern matching

Optionally, route parameters can match regular expression. This can be achieved with the @Param annotation:

Example 3.3. Route parameter matching

@View @Route("/show/{id}")
public void show(@Param(pattern="[0-9]+") String id) {
  ...
}


Route overloading

The same route can bound to different phases, the dispatch behavior depends on the http method:

  • in a GET method the phases priority are view, action, resource

  • in a POST method the phases priority are action, view, resource

Example 3.4. Route parameter matching

@View @Route("/show")
public void showWithView() {
  ...
}

@Action @Route("/show")
public void showWithAction() {
  ...
}


With those rules:

  • A GET request on the /show path will invoke the showWithAction() method

  • A POST request on the /show path will invoke the showWithView() method

Route priorities

When several routes match the same request, the router will use the first route found. The priority parameter of the @Route annotation can be used to increase the priority of a route. This can be useful, specially when a route contains a parameter that could match another route instead.

Example 3.5. Route priority

@View @Route("/show/status", priority = 1)
public void showStatus() {
  ...
}
@View @Route("/show/{name}")
public void show(String name) {
  ...
}


In the example, the showStatus() controller will be invoked when the route /show/status is requested. Without this higher priority, the show(String name) controller might be invoked instead. When no priority is specified, the default priority is 0.

Redirect after post

As explained in the phases chapter, an action never produces markup, instead an action phase is followed by a view phase that will return a markup response. Juzu handles this interaction with an http redirection to the next view phase via the redirect after post pattern.

This behavior is good for the user because the browser will be updated with an URL of the view phase that is bookmarkable and safely refreshable (i.e the user an refresh the page safely).

However Juzu does not enforce this behavior and it can be changed to have the view phase immediatly invoked after the action phase.

@Action
@Route("/process")
public Response.View process() {
  return Controller_.index().withNo(PropertyType.REDIRECT_AFTER_ACTION);
}

@juzu.View
@Route("/show")
public void show() {
  //
}

Portlet request routing

Unlike the http protocol, the portlet request routing does not require the @Route annotation because portlet requests are managed by the portal and have no concept of path mapping.

To achieve request routing, the portlet uses a special portlet request parameter named juzu.op . This parameter determines which controller should be called during a phase. When the juzu.op parameter is not present, Juzu will look for the index view controller.

Controller phases

There are several kinds of controllers bound to a request phase studied in the ???:

  • View controllers annoted with the @juzu.View annotation

  • Action controllers annotated with the @juzu.Action annotation

  • Resource controllers annotated with the @juzu.Resource annotation

  • Event controllers annotated with the @juzu.Event annotation (not yet implemented)

View controllers

A view controller method produces aggregated markup for the application, the invocation of the method should produce markup that will be aggregated in larger page, therefore it should not care about the overall HTML structure.

View parameters describe the current parameters of the view, they are often used for navigation purpose in the application. Juzu supports simple data types such as string and structured data types modelled by Java objects.

  • Simple data types can be the following types String, List<String> and String[]. Later this will be expanded to more simple types such as number, etc..

  • Structured data types : todo

View controller method should return a juzu.Response object that is the content produced by the method. To be more precise it should return a Response.Content or Response.Render object (the latter being a subclass of the former) that contains everything Juzu needs to display the application.

Response.Content is a base class for content, it defines the send method. Juzu invokes this method when it needs to render the response produced by the view method. The invocation of the send method will be performed after the view method is invoked.

    public void send(S stream) throws IOException {
      streamable.send(stream);
    }

During the view phase a controller can generate URLs to other phases (except the event phase) by using controller companion methods. Companion methods returns a juzu.Dispatch object to represent the URL. The final URL is returned by the toString() method of the dispatch object.

Action controllers

Action controller are executed during the action phase of a Juzu application. Usually action methods perform two tasks

  • implement the logic of the application processing, for instance inserting an entity in the database

  • configure the next view phase: setting the next view controller to display and configuring its view parameters of the method when they exist

In the following example, the controller method createUser creates a user and returns a Response.View object that will tell Juzu to use the showUser view controller during the next view phase:

@Action
public Response.View addUser(String userName, String password) {
  orgService.createUser(userName, password);
  return Controller_.showUser(userName);
}

showUser is a companion view method that creates a Response.View object configured with the controller and arguments to use. Like url companion methods, view companion methods are generated during the compilation of the project by Juzu.

Resource controllers

Resource controllers are similar to view controllers, however the resource has full control over the target page. It means that a resource controller must produce the entire resource and it can also chose the mime type returned. Resource controllers have several use cases:

  • Implement ajax resource serving

  • Produce an application resource, such as an image, a script, etc...

Event controllers

not yet implemented

Controller classes

Controller methods belongs to Java classes known as controller classes. Controller classes are ordinary java classes, any class can be turned into a controller by declaring a controller method. Controller classes are registered in the IOC container of the Juzu application, we will study later the benefits.

Controller life cycle

We will study in this section the complete life cycle of a controller object. Juzu relies on the IOC container for managing the life cycle of controller objects, based on the @javax.inject.Inject annotation. If the controller desires, it can receive life cycle callbacks thanks to the @javax.annotation.PostConstruct and @javax.annotation.PreDestroy annotations.

Let's have a look at the complete life cycle of a controller object during a Juzu request:

Figure 3.1. Life cycle of a controller object

Life cycle of a controller object


  1. Juzu begins the request, it will need an controller instance for the request and asks the IOC container an instance

  2. The IOC container creates a fully operational controller instance in several stesp

    1. It gets a controller object instance either by creating a new instance by using the default constructor or the constructor annotated with @Inject

    2. It injects the controller declared dependencies by the @Inject annotation

    3. It invokes any method annotated with @PostConstruct

  3. Juzu obtains a valid controller instance and dispatches that method on the controller

  4. After the invocation, Juzu releases the controller instance and delegates it to the IOC container again

    1. It invokes any method annotated with @PreDestroy

    2. It makes the instance available to the garbage collector

  5. Juzu ends the request and use the Response objet returned by the controller method

Controller dispatch

The bare minimum Juzu will do when dispatching to a controller method is to invoke this method with the proper arguments and use the optionally returned object as a response for the request.

When the controller wants to deal with the dispatch in a generic manner (i.e detyped), it can implement the juzu.request.RequestLifeCycle interface that allows to:

  • Be aware of the request life cycle around (i.e before and after) the controller method dispatch

  • Control the response for the current request

Example 3.6. The RequestLifeCycle interface

public interface RequestLifeCycle {

  void beginRequest(RequestContext context);

  void endRequest(RequestContext context);

}


  • The beginRequest method is invoked before the controller method invocation and the endRequest is invoked after the controller method invocation.

  • The RequestContext object provides a read/write access to a juzu.Response object that is set with the response returned by the controller method invocation. The controller method can declare no return type and instead set the response directly with the RequestContext#setResponse(juzu.Response) method.

  • When the controller method invocation throws an exception, the endRequest method will be invoked with a juzu.Response.Error response set on the RequestContext.

  • The beginRequest invocation can optionally set of response on the RequestContext, when it does the dispatch will stop here and the provided response will be the request response.

  • The endRequest invocation can optionally set a response on the RequestContext, when it does this overrides the previous response provided during the dispatch to the controller method.

Each request produces a response object: a subclass of the juzu.Response class.

Response objects are returned by method processing phases, the class of the object determines the kind of response sent to the client. A response object may carry additional objects such as assets (css or script).

Response object are created thanks to the static factory methods of the juzu.Response class. The Response class is abstract and it has several subclasses that form a possible hierarchy of response adapted to the phase being processed.

Content responses

A content response is a markup or binary data, it can be created with the ok static method:

  public static Response.Content<Stream.Char> ok(CharSequence content) { ... }

It can be used during a view or resource phase to return markup:

@View
public Response.Content index() {
  return Response.ok("Hello World");
}

Render response

A render response extends a content response, it specializes it for aggregated markup, i.e a response where the application manages only one portion of the full page such as a portal:

@View
public Response.Render index() {
  return Response.render("Hello World").withTitle("The Hello");
}

View response

View response is returned after the action phase to configure the next view phase. Usually view responses are not created directly using static factory methods, instead they are created using controller companion static methods, this will be explained in the controller chapter.

Redirect response

Redirect responses are returned during an action phase to redirect the user agent to an URL, its usage is simple:

@Action
public Response.Redirect process() {
  return Response.redirect("http://www.host.com/");
}

Error response

Error response can be returned during any phase to signal an application error. This kind of response is different from a content response with a 5xx status code, however it can be turned into a 5xx response to the client.

@View
public Response index() {
  try {
    ...
  } catch(IOException e) {
    return Response.error(e);
  }
}

An error response can also be generated by the controller method by declaring the exception in its throw clause, so the previous example is equivalent to:

@View
public Response index() throws IOException {
  ...
}

The bridge is the runtime in which Juzu executes, until now Juzu provides two bridges:

  • The servlet bridge executes a Juzu application in a servlet container like Tomcat

  • The portlet bridge executes a Juzu application in a portlet container inside a portal

Servlet bridge

The servlet bridge exposes a Juzu application as a servlet in a Servlet Container.

Juzu servlet

The first step for using the servlet bridge is to configure the juzu.bridge.servlet.JuzuServlet servlet for the application. There is a one to one mapping between a Juzu application and a Juzu servlet. Therefore if you project contains several applications, you should configure a Juzu servlet for each.

Servlet configuration

Declaring a Juzu servlet is done in the web.xml file of the web application:

Example 5.1. The Juzu servlet configuration

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>JuzuServlet</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>juzu.bridge.servlet.JuzuServlet</servlet-class>
  <init-param>
    <param-name>juzu.app_name&gt;</param-name>
    <param-value>my.application</param-value>
  </init-param>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>JuzuServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>


The juzu.app_name init parameter tells Juzu the package of the application to use. The servlet is bound on the / pattern as the default servlet of the web application.

In case of several applications, each can be configured with a path mapping in addition of the default servlet:

Example 5.2. Path mapping configuration

<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>JuzuServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/myapplication/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>


Warning

Any other kind of url-pattern than the default servlet (/) or path mapping is not supported and will raise an error during startup

Portlet bridge

The portlet bridge exposes a Juzu application as a portlet in a Portlet Container.

Juzu portlet

The first step for using the portlet bridge is to configure the juzu.bridge.portlet.JuzuPortlet portlet for the application. There is a one to one mapping between a Juzu application and a Juzu portlet. Therefore if you project contains several applications, you should configure a Juzu portlet for each.

Portlet configuration

Declaring a Juzu portlet is done in the portlet.xml file of the portlet application:

Example 5.3. The Juzu portlet configuration

<portlet>
  <portlet-name>JuzuPortlet</portlet-name>
  <display-name xml:lang="EN">Juzu Portlet Application</display-name>
  <portlet-class>juzu.bridge.portlet.PortletBridge</portlet-class>
  <init-param>
    <param-name>juzu.app_name</param-name>
    <param-value>my.application</param-value>
  </init-param>
  <supports>
    <mime-type>text/html</mime-type>
  </supports>
  <portlet-info>
    <title>Portlet Application</title>
  </portlet-info>
</portlet>


The juzu.app_name init parameter tells Juzu the package of the application to use.

Juzu provides native support for Injection of Control (known as IOC) and relies on the specification JSR 330 (known as @Inject).

Although the JSR-330 is quite small it provides the necessary ground for building Juzu applications. Juzu relies on the injection container for wiring the entire Juzu runtime (controllers, templates, plugins, etc...).

We will explain how Juzu uses IOC for its runtime, we suppose the reader is familliar with IOC and with the @Inject specification, in particular the notion of injection, scope and qualifier should be familliar.

Containers

At the moment Juzu supports three containers implementing the JSR 330:

Note

CDI is a specification that extends the @Inject specification: CDI provides more features than @Inject, however this specification is only implemented by Weld. Nevertheless if your choice is to use CDI you will be leverage its specific features in your Juzu application

Juzu can run with any of those implementation and leaves you the choice of the IOC implementation you want to use. The container to selection is done via the servlet context parameter juzu.inject:

  • guice for Google Guice

  • spring for Spring

  • weld for JBoss Weld

Example 6.1. Configuring the Spring container in web.xml

<context-param>
  <param-name>juzu.inject</param-name>
  <param-value>spring</param-value>
</context-param>


Warning

When no IOC container is specified the Guice container will be used

Inversion Of Control

Beans

Beans are simply object managed by the IOC container, any bean can be injected other beans:

@java.inject.Inject
Service service;

Scopes

Scopes define how a instances of a bean are managed by the IOC container: for a given bean, shall it be instantiated only one time and shared or shall it instantiated everty time it is required ? that's the kind of question that scope answers.

Juzu provides 4 scopes to use within your application:

  • @javax.inject.Singleton scope: a single bean instance is the same for the whole application

  • @juzu.RequestScoped scope: the bean is instantiated once per request

  • @juzu.SessionScoped scope: the bean is instantiated once per session

  • @juzu.FlashScoped scope: the bean is instantiated once per request but is reused if it was instantiated during an action request in the next render request and only in the first one

Qualifiers

Qualifier are designed to distinguish several instances of a same bean. How does a bean differ from another bean ? it's not really possible to tell, qualifiers simply answer this question, allowing to:

  • distinguish beans based upon the qualifier members

  • configure the bean instance for a particular usage

The JSR-330 specification provides the @Named qualifier whose purpose is to give a name to a bean, for instance

@Named("john")
@Inject Person john;

@Named("peter")
@Inject Person peter;

Beans in action

Beans are simply the objects managed by the IOC engine. In a Juzu applications we have several kind of beans:

  • Controllers

  • Template

  • Application beans

  • Plugin beans

Template beans

Every template has a corresponding juzu.template.Template class at runtime. The template class allows applications to interact with templates, most of the time for rendering purpose:

template.render();

A template bean is always qualified by the @Path qualifier. The path qualifier is simply the value of the path relative to the templates package, for instance index.gtmpl is a valid qualifier value. The qualifier allows to have several Template instances and distinguish them.

Templates have the @Singleton scope: a single instance of the template object is created and shared in the IOC container.

Controller beans

Each controller class is turned into a bean, that's how controllers can be injected with other beans. As soon as Juzu finds a class annotated by @View, @Action or @Resource, it is automatically turned into a bean.

Controller have the Request scope by default: every time a controller instance is required it will be created for the duration of the request. It is possible to change the scope of a controller by annotating it with another scope annotation managed by Juzu:

@SessionScoped
public class Controller {
   @View
   public void index() { }
}

Injection a template into a controller

Injecting a template bean into a controller bean is probably the most common Juzu pattern:

@Inject
@Path("index.gtmpl")
Template index;

The template can then be used for rendering purposes:

@View
public void index() {
   index.render();
}

Application beans

Application beans model the custom logic of an application, they are normally injected in controller beans that use them when they process requests. The binding plugin allows an application to declare custom beans that can be used in the application.

POJO bean binding

Binding a Plain Old Java Object (POJO) is a very simple task to accomplish:

@Bindings(@Binding(Mailer.class))
package myapplication;

The bean will be entirely managed by the IOC container, the binding plugin will just declare it in the IOC container. The POJO will be created when needed, for instance when it is inserted in a controller.

public class MyController {
   @Inject Mailer mailer;
   @Action
   public void sendMail(String recipient, String subject, String message) {
      mail.send(recipient, subject, message);
   }
}

Abstract bean binding

Binding an abstract class or an interface type is also possible with the implementation member of the @Binding annotation:

@Bindings(@Binding(value=Mailer.class,implementation=MailerImpl.class))
package myapplication;

Binding with a provider

Sometimes the implementation cannot be created by the IOC container, for instance it may not have a correct constructor, it can only be retrieved using a factory or it should be configured before being used. For such scenarios the implementation can specify a class implementing the javax.inject.Provider interface.

public class ConfiguredMailerProvider implements javax.inject.Provider<Mailer> {

   private String email
   private String password;

   public ConfiguredMailerProvider() {
      this.email = System.getProperty("mailer.email");
      this.password = System.getProperty("mailer.password");
   }

   public Mailer get() {
      return new MailerImpl(email, password);
   }
}

Thanks to the provider, we have a Mailer provider that returns a MailerImpl configured before usage.

Scoped binding

The @Binding annotation provides room for declaring a bean scope:

@Bindings(@Binding(value=Mailer.class,scope=Scope.SINGLETON))

When the scope is not specified, the scope is determined from the bean or implementation that should be annotated with a scope annotation. When it is specified, it overrides the annotation scope the bean could declare.

Qualifying provider

A provider implementation can declare qualifiers on the get method they implement in order to set the qualifiers of the returned bean:

public class MailerProvider implements Provider<Mailer> {
   @Named("mailer")
   public Mailer get() {
      return new MailerImpl();
   }
}

This is useful for declaring qualifiers on a class that is not annotated by qualifiers, because it is not possible to declare qualifiers in an @Binding annotation due to limitations of the Java language.

Provider factories

Provider factories provides plugability for integrating beans that are not managed by the IOC container. The provider factory is a factory for javax.inject.Provider whose purpose is to return a provider for a specific class. Usually provider factories will lookup the service in a registry (like another IOC container) and returns a provider that return them lazily or not.

The provider factory defines the getProvider method:

  /**
   * Returns a provider for a specific type or null if it cannot be produced.
   *
   * @param implementationType the implementation class object
   * @param <T>                the implementation generic type
   * @return a provider for this class or null
   * @throws Exception any exception that would prevent to obtain the provider
   */
  <T> Provider<? extends T> getProvider(Class<T> implementationType)
    throws Exception;

The factory implementation must provide a public zero argument constructor and it will be instantiated during the application boostrap by Juzu to obtain the provider. The returned providers will then be bound into the IOC container.

The IOC container uses the java.util.ServiceLoader discovery mechanism for finding provider factories when injection occurs.

Let's study a simple example with a provider for the current time:

Example 6.2. Time provider factory

package my;

public class TimeProviderFactory implements java.inject.ProviderFactory {
  public <T> Provider<? extends T> getProvider(final Class<T> implementationType) throws Exception {
    if (implementationType == java.util.Date.class) {
      return new Provider<T>() {
        public T get() {
          return implementationType.cast(new java.util.Date());
        }
      };
    }
    else {
      return null;
    }
  }
}


This provider should be declared in the META-INF/services/juzu.inject.ProviderFactory file:

Example 6.3. Time provider configuration

my.TimeProvider


Templating is the View part of a Model View Controlle architecture. We will study in this chapter how the templating system interacts with the Juzu, at compilation time and at runtime, both aspects are very important.

The templating engines

Juzu can use several templating engines, it provides a native template engine as well as the Mustache templating engine. Those engines are not competing, instead they should be seen as alternatives: the native Groovy engine provides the goodness of the Groovy languages, however sometimes some people prefer logic-less templates and Mustache is a template engine they should use. Let's introduce them briefly.

The native template engine

The native template engine extends the Groovy templating system: it can include snippet of Groovy code or resolve Groovy expressions:

Expressions

Expressions are simply Groovy expressions wrapped with the ${...} syntax:

The sky is ${color}

Scriplets

Groovy code can also literaly be used with the scriplet syntax: <% ... %>. Within a scriptlet the out implicit object can be used for outputting markup:

<ul>
<% ["red","green","blue"].each({ color -> out.print("<li>The sky is " + color + "</li>") }) %>
</ul>

The scriplet syntax <%= ... %> can also be used:

The sky is <%= color %>

Controller urls

Controller urls is natively supported by the engine, it allows to create controller URL with a short and compact syntax @{...}:

Example 7.1. Controller URL syntax

<a href="@{index()}">Home</a>


URL expressions can contain parameters and they must be named:

Example 7.2. Controller URL with parameters

<a href="@{purchase(product=1)}">Purchase</a>


The purchase method refers to a controller method, when the application has several controllers, the controller name can be used to prefix the url expression and remove the ambiguity:

Example 7.3. Explicit controller URL

<a href="@{Controller.purchase(product=1)}">Purchase</a>


Under the hood the controller URL syntax uses the controller compagnion for creating the URL: the Controller.purchase(product=1) will uses the controller compagnion Controller_#purchase(String product).

Messages

You can resolve a message in resource bundles in a template with the &{...} syntax:

Example 7.4. Message syntax

<label>&{color}</label>
<input type="text" name="color">


When the message is not found, no output will be done. The resource bundle is resolved with the current user locale.

Warning

This feature at the moment only works with portlets that supports resource bundle declaration natively

Taglib

The native engine provides taglib support using the #{tag}...#{/tag}} or #{tag/} syntax:

#{title value=Hello/}

Available tags are explained in the taglib chapter.

The Mustache template engine

The Mustache template engine uses logic-less templates based on Mustache.java the Java port of Mustache. Mustache is very easy to use, you can read the documentation, however we will have a quick overview of how it can be used in Juzu:

Variables

Variables uses the {{...}} syntax, they are resolved against template parameters or beans.

The sky is {{color}}

Sections

Mustache sections allows to iterate expressions that are multivalued.

todo

Using templates

A template as seen by an application is a bean managed by the IOC container.

Template declaration

Applications use a template by injecting a juzu.template.Template object in its controllers qualified by the juzu.Path annotation:

Example 7.5. Using a template

public class Controller {

  @Inject
  @Path("index.gtmpl") (1) 
  Template index;

  @View
  public void index() {
    index.render(); (2) 
  }
}

1

Declares the template path

2

Renders the template and send the markup to the response


The juzu.Path annotation is a qualifier annotation managed by the IOC container. It is very similar to the @javax.inject.Named qualifier, but it has a special meaning for Juzu for declaring the template.

The render method of a template returns a juzu.Response.Render response which can also be returned by the controller method. This is equivalent to the previous example.

Example 7.6. Returning the generated juzu.Response.Render

  @View
  public Response.Render index() {
    return index.render();
  }


Type safe parameters

Template type safe parameters brings more type safety in your applications. Templates can declare parameters and they are made available on a subclass of the juzu.template.Template class.

Parameters are declared using the taglib support of the native template engine

Example 7.7. Native template parameter declaration

#{param name=color/}
The sky is ${color}.


or the pragma support of the Mustache engine

Example 7.8. Mustache template parameter declaration

{{%param color}}
The sky is {{color}}.


When the template is declared in a controller, a subclass of juzu.template.Template can be used:

package weather;

public class Controller {

  @Inject
  @Path("sky.gtmpl")
  weather.templates.sky sky; (1) 

  @View
  public void index() {
    sky.with().color("blue").render(); (2) 
  }
}

1

The weather.templates.sky typed template class

2

Use the sky template color parameter

The weather.templates.sky class does not exist in the original source but it is available when the application is compiled because it will be generated by Juzu compiler integration. The sky templates provides a fluent syntax to bind parameters: sky.with().color("blue").render().

Expression resolution

When we studied the templating engine syntax but we did not mentioned exactly how expression are resolved.

Single name expressions

Both templating system provides a syntax for resolving single name expressions:

  • ${...} for Groovy

  • {{...}} for Mustache

Resolution is performed against template parameters or bean named with the javax.inject.Named qualifier.

Example 7.9. Named bean

@javax.inject.Named("color")
public class Color {
  public String toString() {
    return "red";
  }
}


Example 7.10. Template parameters

index.with().set("color", "red").render(); (1) 
index.with().color("red").render(); (2) 

1

Detyped version

2

Type safe version


Compound expressions

Compound expressions are resolved the same way for the first name and the expression resolve will attempt to navigate the rest of the expressions from this object:

  • ${weather.color} for Groovy

  • {{#weather}}{{color}}{{/weather}} for Mustache

Example 7.11. Named bean

@javax.inject.Named("weather")
public class Weather {

  private String color;

  public Weather(String color) {
    this.color = color;
  }

  public Weather() {
    this.color = "red";
  }

  public String getColor() {
    return color;
  }
}


Example 7.12. Template parameters

index.with().set("weather", new Weather("blue")).render(); (1) 
index.with().color(new Weather("blue")).render(); (2) 

1

Detyped version

2

Type safe version


}}}

This chapter dives into the template life cycle from the compilation time to the run time. We will describe the template Service Provider Interface (SPI), the SPI is designed to make Juzu templating extensible and integrating template engines in Juzu. This chapter is optional is you are only writing ab application with Juzu, however it is a must read if you want to know more Juzu internals or if you want to understand how to integrate a template engine in Juzu.

When a Juzu application is compiled, the Juzu annotation processor detects the @Path annotations and triggers the compilation of the related templates. The template compilation can be split in two parts:

  • Generating the template companion class that inherits the juzu.template.Template class. This part is generic and works with any templating system, it is entirely managed by Juzu.

  • Processing the template file, this task is delegated to the TemplateProvider interface and is extensible. The provider allows to have several templating system in Juzu and decouples the template compilation process from the details of the templating engine.

Compiling a Groovy template

Let's study an example with the Groovy template at compilation time.

Figure 8.1. Compiling a Groovy template

Compiling a Groovy template


When the Java compiler is invoked, the following steps are executed

  1. The Java compiler triggers the Juzu annotation processor when it finds the @Path annotation

  2. Juzu resolves the relative path to the templates package of the application

    1. When the template cannot be resolved a compilation error is triggered

    2. Otherwise the template is loaded

  3. The template provider is looked up according to the file name extension, it generates the index_.groovy source file

  4. Juzu creates the index class that extends the juzu.template.Template class annotated by the @Path("index.gtmpl") annotation

After that the only remaining part is to compile the index_.groovy source to a class. It can be achieved either at build time using the groovyc compiler or at load time when the index template is loaded using a GroovyClassLoader. The former approach makes the build a bit more complex (but not much as Groovy compilation is fairly well supported in build systems or IDEs) as it requires to run a Groovy compilation but it will perform additional validation of the template as well as reduce the load time of the template. The later approach will detect any compilation error (such as Groovy syntax error) at runtime and the index_.groovy compilation will take a few milliseconds.

This flexibility allows to use the lazy approach during development and when the application is released then the Groovy compiler can be used to compile the index_.groovy.

Type safe URL resolution

Groovy templates provides the @{...} syntax for generating URL from the application controllers. This section gives an overview of the underlying resolution mechanism.

Figure 8.2. Template URL resolution during compilation

Template URL resolution during compilation


  • Parse: the template is parsed into its model representation

  • Resolve: the index link is resolved againt the controller meta model

  • Validate: the index link is validated

  • Emit: the corresponding index_.groovy file is emitted and save on the class output

  • Compile: the Groovy source is compiled into a class by the groovyc compiler (this part is done after javac)

Template Service Provider Interface

Juzu provides a Service Provider Interface (SPI) for integrating thirdparty template engine. Actually all template system are integrated with the SPI. We will study briefly the integration points so you can integrate a template engine of your choice in Juzu.

Template providers

The juzu.impl.template.spi.TemplateProvider is the main entry point when a templating system is integrated. The provider is triggered during the compilation phase by the APT system built into the Java compiler.

/**
 * A provider for templating system.
 *
 * @author <a href="mailto:julien.viet@exoplatform.com">Julien Viet</a>
 * @param <M> the template model
 */
public abstract class TemplateProvider<M extends Serializable> {
  ...
}

The provider must declare the template model <M> generic type, this type must be a serializable as Juzu will sometimes write template models on the disk during the compilation. This usually happens only in Eclipse due its incremental compiler architecture. The type specified by the provider is privately managed (i.e it is opaque for Juzu) and it symbolizes an internal representation of the parsed source (usually an Abstract Syntax Tree), it will be used in various methods of the provider.

Let's have a review of the methods of this class to have a better understanding.

  public abstract String getSourceExtension();

The getSourceExtension() method is used to determine what file extension the provider can compile. The implementation should return a constant value, for instance the Groovy provide simply returns the gtmpl value.

  public abstract M parse(
      ParseContext context,
      CharSequence source) throws TemplateException;

  public abstract void process(
      ProcessContext context,
      Template<M> template) throws TemplateException;

  public abstract void emit(
      EmitContext context,
      Template<M> template) throws TemplateException, IOException;

The parse, process and emit methods care about transforming the template source to its final representation: the compiled template.

  • The parse method is invoked with the content of the template and returns a template model. The representation returned by the parse method is a parsed representation of the template source. If a parsing error occurs the method can throw a TemplateException.

  • The process method is invoked after the template is parsed with the necessary context for performing further processing of the template, for instance the Groovy templating engine performs the resolution of type safe URLs or type safe parameters declaration at this moment. During the process:

    • The provider can resolve other templates using the ProcessContext, if the template to resolve is not yet loaded it will trigger the parse/process/emit lifecycle, it if was already processed the template is simply returned

    • The implementation can resolve controller methods and translate them into method invocation, this is used for checking type safe URL and translating them into controller companion invocation

    • The juzu.impl.template.spi.Template argument represents the template, it has several fields such as the template model or the template path

    • The implementation can declare type safe parameters using the Template#addParameter(String) method. The declared parameters will be generated on the juzu.template.Template subclass

  • The emit method is invoked when the template processing is over. The EmitContext interface can be used to create resources during this round.

  public abstract Class<? extends TemplateStub> getTemplateStubType();

Finally the getTemplateStubType() returns the type of a java class that will be used for creating a template stub. For each template, a stub is created, the stub is responsible for loading the template at runtime, i.e the original template or the compiled template that may have been generated during compilation during the emit callback.

Template stub

Template stubs are java classes created by Juzu for managing a template at runtime on behalf of the provider. Each provider provides its own stub implementation as a juzu.impl.template.spi.TemplateStub subclass.

A stub must provide a public constructor accepting a java.lang.String argument: the template id. The template id if the class name of the generated template. In addition, a stub must implement two abstract methods:

  protected abstract void doInit(ClassLoader loader);

  protected abstract void doRender(TemplateRenderContext renderContext)
      throws TemplateExecutionException, IOException;

The doInit method loads the template using the provided ClassLoader, it will be call only once before the template is rendered. Usually it uses the template id provided during the construction of the template to locate the template on the disk, in its original form or in its compiled form.

The doRender method renders the template using the provided TemplateRenderContext. The render context provides the necessary hooks such as:

  • Producing markup

  • Setting the title

  • Obtaining the locale

  • Accessing parameters or application beans for resolving expressions

Template at work

After having described the various pieces of the templating SPI, let's look at how the template generated stubs are used by Juzu templating system at runtime.

When the controller declares the index.gtmpl template the compiler produces three artifacts

  • the index class template inherits juzu.template.Template: it is the only class visible from the controller and the whole application

  • the index_.groovy Groovy template is the effective template code: it produces the markup, resolve expressions, etc...

Figure 8.3. index groovy at work

index groovy at work


When a controller is instantiated, the index template instance is injected into the controller, the @Path annotation plays an essential role because it's a qualifier and that qualifier is used to distinguish the correct subclass to inject in the controller.

When the template is created, the corresponding template stub is instantiated. When the template needs to be rendered, the doInit(ClassLoader) method of the stub is invoked. At this moment the Groovy index_ class is loaded from the class loader, when the class is not found, the index_.groovy is loaded and it is compiled on the fly.

Qualified template class

Controller can be injected with the juzu.template.Template class, however they can also be injected with the template subclass that was genereted by Juzu: instead of using the qualified template injection, the controller declares the template index subclass. This approach cab be used when type safe parameters are used as only the index type declares the fluent API.

For instance if the index.gtmpl declares the color parameter the index class will look like:

@Path("index.gtmpl")
public class index extends Template {

  ...

  public index with() {
    return new index.Builder();
  }

  public class Builder extends Template.Builder {

    public Builder color(String color) {
      // Generated code
    }
  }
}

The controller can then use the fluent API:

public class Controller {

  @Inject
  @Path("index.gtmpl")
  Template index;

  @View
  public void index() {
    index.with().color("red").render();
  }
}

A tag library is an essential component of a templating system, allowing to enrich a templating with encapsulated programmable logic.

Important

Juzu does not yet allow application to define their own tags, it will be added a a new feature in a future version.

Taglib syntax

Like most taglib syntaxes, Juzu provides two syntaxes for invoking a tag:

Example 9.1. Start and end tag syntax

#{foo}bar#{/foo}


The start/end syntax opens the tag with #{foo} and ends it with #{/foo}.

A tag can also be empty:

Example 9.2. Empty tag syntax

#{foo/}


A tag can also be invoked empty with the #{foo/} syntax.

Include tag

The include tag simply includes a template inside the current template. The inclusion is dynamic and not static, meaning that the content of the included template is not inserted in the calling template, instead when inclusion is performed the control is passed to the included template.

Example 9.3. The include tag

#{include path=dispatched.gtmpl/}


The path attribute determines the template to include, the path value is relative to the templates package.

Decorate / Insert tag

The decorate tag allows the content of the decorating template to wrap the content of the template invoking the tag. The insert tag should be used in the decorating template to specify the place where to insert the markup produced by the template to decorate.

Example 9.4. The wrapped template

#{decorate path=box.gtmpl/}


Example 9.5. The decoraring template

<div style="border: 1px solid black">
#{insert/}
</div>


Title tag

The title tag specifies a title to insert in the juzu.Response.Render object the template will produce.

Example 9.6. Setting the title

#{title value=Home/}


Param tag

The param tag enhances the type safety of templates, allowing to declare parameters for executing a template. When such a parameter is declared, the generated template class companion will have a fluent parameter for setting the value of the parameter:

Example 9.7. Declaring a template parameter

#{param name=color/}


Example 9.8. Using the template parameter

@Inject my.templates.index index;

@View
public void index() {
  index.with().color("red").render();
}


Web assets are resources used over the web such as stylesheet and script files.

Asset serving

Assets are declared by the application with the following attributes:

  • an id to reference it

  • a location defining where to find the asset

  • a source for locating the asset

  • a list of dependencies referencing other assets specifying the assets that needs to be served before the declaration

When an application is deployed, assets are registered with the asset manager. The asset manager has several responsibilities:

  • manage asset dependencies: the order in which assets are literaly declared when they are served. For instance the jquery-ui asset depends on the jquery asset because the jquery script must be loaded before the jquery-ui script.

  • resolve asset references: each asset reference must be resolved and produce a final web url that will produce the resource when it is resolved by the web browsers

During a request, asset identifiers are added to the response. At the end of the request, the runtime uses the asset manager to translate the response assets into a list of uri to add to the page.

Figure 10.1. Using assets in a request

Using assets in a request


An asset reference is a link to an asset value that is configured externally, thus an asset of any kind will always resolve to a location and an uri. Let's examine the different possible asset location:

  • AssetLocation.URL: the value is opaque to Juzu, for instance the a CDN hosted script such as https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js.

  • AssetLocation.SERVER: the asset is served by the same web server in which Juzu is deployed. If the asset value is relative, the final uri will resolve relatively to the web archive context address.

  • AssetLocation.APPLICATION: the asset is served by Juzu asset server (a servlet configured in the web application) and the resource is located on the classpath.

Asset server

For serving classpath assets, Juzu requires the configuration of the asset server as a servlet declaration:

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>AssetServlet</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>juzu.impl.asset.AssetServlet</servlet-class>
  <load-on-startup>0</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>AssetServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/assets/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

This declaration should be in the web.xml of the application whether it is a servlet or a portlet application.

Note

If you are using Servlet 3.0, this declaration is not necessary

Asset plugin

The asset plugin provides declarative asset configuration, it will take care of registering assets on the asset manager. The @Assets annotation declares a list of assets used by the an application.

Example 10.1. JQuery UI declarative asset configuration

@Assets(
  scripts = {
    @Script(id = "jquery",
            src = "javascripts/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"), (1) 
    @Script(src = "javascripts/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js", (2) 
            depends = "jquery") (3) 
  },
  stylesheets = {
    @Stylesheet(src = "ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.css")
  }
)
package my.application;

1

Declares the jquery asset

2

Declares the jquery-ui asset

3

Make jquery-ui depend on jquery


The assets will be served by the asset servlet because the application location is the default when not specified. The first @Script annotation declares the JQuery asset reference identified by the id member as being jquery. The second @Script annotation declares the JQuery-UI plugin, it does not need an id member because nothing refers to it, however it declares a dependency with the depends member that declares it depending on the jquery asset. JQuery-UI requires also a stylesheet to be served along with the script, it is achieved thanks to the @Stylesheet annotation.

Application assets

Applications assets can be located anywhere on the application classpath, they can be either absolute or relatives. Relative assets declared by the asset plugin must be located in the assets package of the application, for instance an application packaged under my.application will have its relative assets located under my.application.assets.

Example 10.2. Declarative relative application asset configuration

@Assets(scripts = @Script(
  src = "myscript.js"))
package my.application;


The location AssetLocation.APPLICATION is not declared because it is the default one.

Server assets

Server assets are served by the webserver in which the application is deployed. Relative server assets are served from the war file containing the application.

Example 10.3. Declarative relative server asset configuration

@Assets(scripts = @Script(src = "myscript.js", location = AssetLocation.SERVER))
package my.application;


External assets

External assets declares an opaque URL for Juzu.

Example 10.4. External classpath asset configuration

@Assets(scripts = @Script(
  src = "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js",
  location = AssetLocation.CLASSPATH))
package my.application;


Managing assets programmatically

The @Assets annotations will serve all the declared assets in scripts and stylesheets. Sometimes it is convenient to declared assets but serve them upon application request. This can be achieved with the declaredScripts and declaredStylesheets declarations:

@Assets(declaredScripts = @Script(
  id = "myscript",
  src = "myscript.js"))
package my.application;

When an application requires an asset, it adds the asset to the Response.Render object:

@Inject
@Path("index.gtmpl")
Template index;

@View
public Response.Render index() {
  Response.Render render = index.render();
  render.withScript("myscript");
  return render;
}

The same with a fluent syntax:

@Inject
@Path("index.gtmpl")
Template index;

@View
public Response.Render index() {
  return index.render().withScript(myscript""));
}

The servlet plugin enhance Juzu servlet applications.

Servlet class generation

A Juzu servlet application is managed by a JuzuServlet configured with the application name. Since Servlet 3.0, configuration can be easier thanks to servlet annotations. Juzu leverages this capability and is able to generate a servlet for an application with the juzu.plugin.servlet.Servlet annotation:

Example 11.1. Juzu servlet generation

@Application
@Servlet("/") (1) 
package my.application;

1

The application url-pattern


Asset server automatic registration

The jar of the servlet plugin contains a web-fragment.xml that automatically declares the asset servlet simplifying further more the configuration of the application.

The portlet plugin enhance Juzu portlet applications.

Portlet class generation

A Juzu portlet application is managed by a JuzuPortlet configured with the application name. The @juzu.plugin.portlet.Portlet annotation can be used to generate a subclass of the JuzuPortlet that configures the application name for you, easing the configuration of the portlet.xml corresponding section.

@Portlet
package my;
<portlet>
  <portlet-name>MyApplication</portlet-name>
  <display-name xml:lang="EN">My Application</display-name>
  <portlet-class>myapp.MyPortlet</portlet-class>
  <supports>
    <mime-type>text/html</mime-type>
  </supports>
  <portlet-info>
    <title>My Application</title>
  </portlet-info>
</portlet>

The plugin will generate the portlet using the application name with the first letter capitalized and the Portlet suffix. In our example the my application generates the MyPortlet class. If you don't like it you can change the name of the generated class in the application:

@Portlet(name "MyGreatPortlet")
package my;
<portlet>
  <portlet-name>MyApplication</portlet-name>
  <display-name xml:lang="EN">My Application</display-name>
  <portlet-class>myapp.MyGreatPortlet</portlet-class>
  <supports>
    <mime-type>text/html</mime-type>
  </supports>
  <portlet-info>
    <title>My Application</title>
  </portlet-info>
</portlet>

Portlet preferences injection

During the various phase of an application, the current portlet preferences can be injected::

Example 12.1. Injecting portlet preferences

@Inject javax.portlet.PortletPreferences preferences;


Note

The same restriction defined in the portlet specification applies to the provided preferences object: i.e saving preferences can only be performed during an action phase.

Resource bundle injection

During the various phase of an application, the portlet resource bundle for the current locale can be injected:

Example 12.2. Injecting the portlet resource bundle

@Inject java.util.ResourceBundle bundle;


This is equivalent of doing:

Locale locale = request.getLocale();
ResourceBundle bundle = portlet.getConfig().getResourceBundle(locale);

This resource bundle can be configured in the portlet.xml deployment descriptor.

Building

Add the Portlet plugin jar to your compilation classpath.

In Maven it can achieved by adding the Less plugin dependency to your POM:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.juzu</groupId>
  <artifactId>juzu-plugins-portlet</artifactId>
  <version>0.6.2</version>
</dependency>

The file upload plugin integrates Apache Commons FileUpload in Juzu. The plugin decodes multipart requests as file objects and can inject them as controller method parameters. This plugin works with the servlet bridge and the portlet bridge.

File upload in an action phase

File upload can be handled during an action of a portlet or a servlet:

@Action
@Route("/upload")
public void upload(org.apache.commons.fileupload.FileItem file) {
   if (file != null) {
      // Handle the file upload
   }
}

Note

The @Route annotation is only meaningfull for the servlet bridge. In case of a portlet, the URL is managed by the portal.

File upload in a resource phase

File upload can also be handled in a resource phase.

@Resource
@Route("/upload")
public Response.Content upload(org.apache.commons.fileupload.FileItem file) {
   if (file != null) {
      // Handle the file upload
   }
   return Response.ok("Upload is done");
}

Handling upload in a resource phase can be used when the file is uploaded via Ajax: the application does not want a view phase to be triggered after the upload.

Table of Contents

Usage
Building

LESS is a dynamic stylesheet language which extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, mixins, operations and functions. LESS is easy to learn thanks to the online documentation.

Juzu provides a LESS plugin that takes care of compiling a LESS stylesheet into a CSS stylesheet which are then served by the Asset plugin. This chapter explains how to use LESS and combine it with the Asset plugin.

Usage

The LESS plugin operates at compilation time only because the only task he has to do is to transform a LESS source code into a CSS stylesheet. The runtime part is usually done by the Asset plugin.

The @Less annotation annotates a package containing an assets package. This assets package should contain the LESS files to be compiled.

Example 14.1. Annotating an application package for processing LESS files

@Less("stylesheet.less")
@Application
package myapp;

import juzu.plugin.less.Less;


The stylesheet.less file will be located in the myapp.assets package. The assets child package of the annotated package should contain the stylesheet, this is done on purpose to coincide exactly with the assets package used by the Asset plugin. During the compilation phase the stylesheet.less will be compiled to the stylesheet.css. If we want this file to be served with the application we simply add the corresponding @Assets annotation:

Example 14.2. LESS and Asset plugins in action

@Less("stylesheet.less")
@Assets(stylesheets = @Stylesheet(
  src = "stylesheet.css",
  location = AssetLocation.CLASSPATH)
)
@Application
package myapp;

import juzu.Application;
import juzu.asset.AssetLocation;
import juzu.plugin.less.Less;
import juzu.plugin.asset.Assets;
import juzu.plugin.asset.Stylesheet;


By default LESS will use a default formatting for the generated CSS. To achieve smaller CSS size, a minify option can be used, this option will trim the whitespace when processing the file : @Less(value = "stylesheet.less", minify = true).

Building

Add the Less plugin jar to your compilation classpath.

In Maven it can achieved by adding the Less plugin dependency to your POM:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.juzu</groupId>
  <artifactId>juzu-plugins-less</artifactId>
  <version>0.6.2</version>
</dependency>