Spring I/O 2012: Natural Templating in Spring MVC with Thymeleaf

Who are these guys?
José Miguel Samper
Thymeleaf active contributor (since the beginning!)
OSS author: osSeo, porQual, YAV Tags

Daniel Fernández
Thymeleaf author & project lead
Also jasypt, op4j, javatuples, javaRuntype, javagalician

AGENDA
1. Introducing Thymeleaf
2. Natural templating
3. Let's write templates!
4. Present + future

Introducing Thymeleaf
4. Present + future

The Project
· It's a Java Template Engine
· Can be used as view layer in Spring MVC
· First stable release: July 2011
· Currently: 2.0.x
· Elegant, configurable, extensible
· 21st-century feature set
· FUN TO USE!

A template engine? What's that? (I)
· Not a Web Framework
· Usually a part of them
· Many web frameworks have their own
· Takes care of the view layer
· Template + Data = Document

${user.name} → John Apricot

Template engines in Spring MVC (II)
· Abstraction:
· ViewResolver, View
· Default: JSP + JSTL + Spring taglibs
· Other integrations:
· Apache Velocity
· FreeMarker
· Apache Tiles, XSTL, JasperReports, ...

The (main) features
· Java, DOM-based
· Online (Web) or Offline (email, XML data...)
· Produces XML, XHTML or HTML5
· Expression eval, i18n, URL rewriting...
· Full Spring MVC integration
· Spring EL, form binding, i18n...
· Configurable and extensible
· Static prototyping abilities

Some features are special (I)
· DOM-based: Especially made for the web
· Web UIs are represented as DOM @ browsers
· DOM allows powerful processing of documents
· Thymeleaf's DOM means processing power
· Better than sequential text processing

Some features are special (II)
· Configurability & Extensibility
· Dialects
• From "create your own processor
libraries"...
• ... to "create your own template engine"
· Resolvers ("finders"): templates, messages...
· Cache strategies
· Even "Template Modes"
• Decide what you want to call "a template"
• If it's DOM-able, it's processable.

Some features are special (III)
· Static prototypes
· Static prototyping is not your enemy anymore
· UI usually starts with static prototypes
· Prototype-to-working-UI usually hard path
· A new approach: NATURAL TEMPLATING!

Natural Templating
4. Present + future

Natural what?
· From Wikipedia: Template Engine (web)

“Natural Templates = the template can be
a document as valid as the final result,
the engine syntax doesn't break the
document's structure”

How do we evaluate it?
· “valid document, don't break structure”
· Templates should be statically displayable
· Static = Open in browser, no web server
· Templates should work as prototypes

How can that be done?
· Take profit of browsers' display behaviour
· Use custom attribs, browsers ignore them

<div exec="doit()">...</div>

· No expressions inside tag bodies

<div exec="substitute_body('hello!')">
Some nice prototyping text...
</div>

Can JSP do it?

NO :-(

Can JSP+JSTL do it?

NO :-|

Can Velocity do it?

NO :o(

Can FreeMarker do it?

NO :-[

And... can Thymeleaf do it?

YES! ;-)

Just how bad is not having this? (I)
thvsjsp (example app): JSP on web server

Just how bad is not having this? (II)
thvsjsp: Thymeleaf on web server

Just how bad is not having this? (III)
thvsjsp: JSP statically displayed

Just how bad is not having this? (IV)
thvsjsp: Thymeleaf statically displayed

Let's write templates!
4. Present + future

Writing texts
· th:text HTML-escaped text (default)
· th:utext unescaped text

Formatting
#dates, #calendars, #numbers, #strings...

URLs
· @{...} syntax

...produces...

· Automatic URL-rewriting is performed

Iteration
· th:each

...produces...

Iteration status
· th:each

...produces...

Conditionals (I)
· th:if

· th:unless

Conditionals (II)
· th:switch / th:case

Forms and bean-binding (I)
· th:object, th:field

Forms and bean-binding (II)
· Forms integrate fully with Spring
· th:field acts exactly as Spring taglib tags
• Slightly different behaviour depending on
host tag
· PropertyEditors work OK
· Spring EL expressions in th:field work OK
· Validations work OK (th:errors)

Page composition
· Declare fragment with th:fragment

· Reuse th:include

· ...and reuse again...

Inlining
· Text, Javascript and Dart inlining
· th:inline="text"|"javascript"|"dart"

Present + Future
4. Present + future

Does anybody use this thing?
· OSS = # of users difficult to know
· Jul 2011 - Jan 2012: 2,528 downloads
· Strongly increasing rate
· Top country @SF.net: China (37%)
· With Spring integrations @maven: 89%

Thymeleaf in production
· sahibinden.com
· Online classifieds & ecommerce, Turkey
· [alexa.com] rank 625th worldwide, 9th Turkey
· Search engine frontend
• View layer: Thymeleaf 2.0
• Size: 20 servers
• 1 Billion hits/month ~385/sec
· Helped in boosting Thymeleaf performance

The Future
· Detached template modes
– One file for HTML, another for instructions
· More performance fine-tuning
· More docs, tutorials, example apps...
· Maven archetype(s)
· ...

Where to go, what to see...
· Documentation, articles, code examples
http://www.thymeleaf.org/documentation.html

· User forum
http://forum.thymeleaf.org/

· Twitter
@thymeleaf

Spring I/O 2012: Natural Templating in Spring MVC with Thymeleaf

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