Rendering basics

To define a renderer for a content type, a Spring definition is needed.

The minimal definition looks like this:

The minimal definition doesn't define a controller.

To also define a controller, add a class attribute. The controller class must extend the JspViewController class.

The "id" attribute matches the contentType property of the content.

To render the content, use the render tag from a JSP, with the content object or ID as parameter.

This renders the content using the default template defined for this content type.

Accessing content

Content from the CMS is a Java Bean. A simple example can be an article:

public class ArticleBean implements CMSContent{
    
    private String title;
    private String body;
    private Author author;
    
    /* ... getters and setters */

Content from the CMS is available directly in the JSP using standard EL syntax.

article.jsp:

Example of rendered HTML:

Controller override

The controller can override values from the content objects simply by defining a getter method with the same signature as the content getter.

For instance if we need to HTML-escape the article title, this can (and should) be done in the controller.

ArticleController.java:

public class ArticleController extends JspViewController{

    public String getTitle() {
        ArticleBean article = (ArticleBean)getContent();
        return EscapeChars.forHTML( article.getTitle());
    }
    
}

NB! No change is needed in the JSP!

Tip: If no controller is needed, it can be skipped in the view definition.

View parameters

To pass a parameter from a view to a sub-view, simply add an attribute to the render tag.

In this example the index parameter is passed from the view to the sub-view:

The passed parameter is available directly in the view.

If the parameter should be handled by the controller instead of being sent directly to the view, simply add a setter for that property.

public class ArticleController extends JspViewController{
    
    private int index;

    public void setIndex(int index) {
        this.index = index;
    }
    public String getLiClass() {
        return index%2==0?"even":"odd";
    }
    

Finally - change the JSP to use the new property from the controller, instead of using the index parameter directly:

Controller initialization

The view definition is a Spring file, so you can do dependency injection as you are used to in Spring.

The controller must extend the JspViewController class.

public class SomeController extends JspViewController{
    
    private String stringParam;
    private Object beanParam;
    
    public String getStringParam() {
        return stringParam;
    }
    public void setStringParam(String stringParam) {
        this.stringParam = stringParam;
    }
    public Object getBeanParam() {
        return beanParam;
    }
    public void setBeanParam(Object beanParam) {
        this.beanParam = beanParam;
    }
    
}

Note that here, the default namespace is set to the Content Front namespace, so Spring tags must use a prefix. It is of course also possible to use Spring namespace as the default namespace.

Render Types - rendering content in different perspectives

To render content in a different perspective, specify the renderType attribute, and create another JSP with suffix "-<render type>". (The dash is important!)

For instance, when using list as render type, article-list.jsp will be used for the view with name article and corresponding default JSP article.jsp

Example: list.jsp

article-list.jsp:

Example of rendered output:

Advanced Render Types

If another controller is needed for the alternative Render Type, create another Spring definition entry using the same naming convention as above:

• Append -<renderType> to the basic definition. (note the dash -)

Multiple content repositories

Content Front supports rendering content from multiple content repositories.

If, for instance the a second CMS is configured , content from this repository can be rendered together with content from the default repository using the extra attribute "contentProvider"