Update to Sitemesh 3 #13058
Comments
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Thank you for the interest in supporting Sitemesh 3. The Grails 6 GA is around the corner. It would be great to have an idea of how much effort is required so we can plan better. I would request you to help with the development and we might be able to include it in 6.0.0 or 6.1.0. |
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I took a look at the grails implementation and it looks like there was some customizations requiring some extra classes for Sitemesh 2. I already updated Sitemesh 2 with the fixes and we should be able to at the very least include Sitemesh 2.5 with Grails 6. I’ll also come up with documentation on migration |
SiteMesh Upgrade OptionsI've been digging into the Grails SiteMesh integration and it is a bit more involved than I anticipated. There is a lot of customization and work arounds. Most Complex - 2.5.0Going from SiteMesh 2.4.2 to SiteMesh 2.5.0 may be challenging due to the introduction of buffering in 2.5.0 which further diverges the Grails custom implementation from the more recent changes. What is most problematic, is that Grails appears to have introduced its own type of buffering as well. Simple - 2.4.3 and Grails 6.0.x ready. - NOW COMPLETE - Pending 1 pull request.I already released SiteMesh 2.4.3 which slightly reduces the grails-web-sitemesh footprint by removing custom classes that were created as a workarounds to a long standing bug 2.4.2 bugs. More work - 3.1.0 and Grails 6.0.x ready - NOW COMPLETE - Pending 2 pull requests (Request 1 and Request 2).The key difference between Sitemesh 2 and Sitemesh 3 is that Sitemesh 3 is not coupled to any templating system. It is completely decoupled. It is as simple as just adding a single servlet filter that works on top of any view technology. I've created a sample Spring Boot 2.7 application that demonstrates the integration. Because of this, migrating Grails to Sitemesh 3 is as simple as injecting the Filter and using a Grails tag library that simply just writes the new Sitemesh 3 tags. This can all be done in a plugin (NOW COMPLETE). For example, an existing Grails template: <html lang="en">
<head>
<title><g:layoutTitle default="Hello"/> | World </title>
<g:layoutHead/>
</head>
<body>
<g:layoutBody/>
<g:pageProperty name="page.javascript" />
</body>
</html>The tag library works by producing Sitemesh 3 tags used by the Sitemesh 3 filter does all the work: <html lang="en">
<head>
<title><sitemesh:write property='Hello World' /> | Example </title>
<sitemesh:write property='head' />
</head>
<body>
<sitemesh:write property='body'/>
<sitemesh:write property='page.javascript'/>
</body>
</html>Going Further (JDK 17) - Jakarta compatible SiteMesh 3.2 already available.I have already started a Jakarta Branch for SiteMesh 3 which would ease Grails migration to JDK 17. Final ThoughtsMigrating from Sitemesh 2 to Sitemesh 3 not only completely decouples Sitemesh from GSP, but it also offers one new powerful feature that GSP has been lacking: Decorator Chaining. With SiteMesh 3, you can apply multiple decorators to a view. For instance something like this: <meta name="layout" content="my-decorator,my-other-decorator" />is now allowed. I would like to see a Grails independent GSP example. It appears work was done on this some time ago, but has not been updated since. I've updated the previous work (codeconsole/grails-boot) to the latest Spring Boot 1.x, but it appears not possible to use with Grails > 3.x due to StandaloneGrailsApplication.java not being included in 3.x? Is there another way to use GSP pages independently? |
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@puneetbehl I am willing to release a 2.4.3 Jakarta compliant version of SiteMesh if there is a grails-gsp jdk 17 branch. I am also willing to do whatever development is necessary to make SiteMesh work on that jdk 17 branch. I can have this ready within 1 week from when it is requested or within 1 week of a jdk 17 grails-gsp branch being created. The only reason I mention this is because I am assuming Sitemesh was a contributing factor in not releasing Jakarta as part of Grails 6. |
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@puneetbehl I've created a SiteMesh 3 plugin demonstrating the use of SiteMesh 3 in Grails: All of the SiteMesh 2 code could be deleted from grails-gsp and the plugin will work seamlessly with grails so that all the existing tags work and no changes are necessary to upgrade. |
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@codeconsole Good job! Thank you for your hard work. Next, I will upgrade to this version. It is said that 2.5 has a significant performance improvement, when will version 2.5.0 be released? |
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Hello @rainboyan, yeah, I will be releasing 2.5.0 in the next week or so. I am working hard completely decoupling Grails from SiteMesh. The plan right now is to release the new 3.1.0, submit 2 small pull requests for Grails 6 grais-gsp and grails-core (already complete), merge atlassians latest changes into 2.5.0, then release 2.5.0. I have released a Grails pull request for 2.4.3, but since I already have Grails working with 3.1.0, I will most likely not update Grails for 2.5. |
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I have everything ready to go for 6.0.x This is what I recommend: Pull Request: Update SiteMesh 2.4.2 to 2.4.3 Once these pull requests are complete, either SiteMesh 2.4.3 or SiteMesh 3.1.0 can be used independently with Grails 6.0.x |
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@codeconsole Thank you for your reply. I have a couple of questions here,
I'm not sure, Grails uses Semantic Versioning or not. Now that Grails 6 is already using Sitemesh 2.4, upgrading to 3.1 is clearly a breaking change.
Sitemesh 3 has changed the package name to Have you considered creating a Spring Boot Starter for SiteMesh? Recently, I've been working on refactoring the ViewResolver implementation for Grails, which is now using other template engines like Groovy MarkupTemplate and Freemarker in Grails applications, thanks to the support already available in Spring Boot. Finally, have a nice weekend! |
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@rainboyan nothing is breaking here. I currently am using Grails 6 with SiteMesh 3 in a production environment. SiteMesh 3 is extremely non-invasive and is just a filter so it works with any framework. There are no breaking changes. No customization is needed. All you have to do is install the plugin. Once the 2 pull requests I mentioned above, you don't even need the sitemesh 2 jar installed and grails runs fine. As a temporary workaround, the plugin also works without the pull requests, but you will still need the sitemesh 2 jar installed. Give it a try. Grails 6 Installation instructions:Step 1 - Install the pluginModify repositories {
// ... existing repos here
maven { url "https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/" }
}
dependencies {
implementation("org.sitemesh:grails-plugin-sitemesh3:0.1-SNAPSHOT")
// ... existing dependencies
}
Step 2 - You are done. Enjoy Bonus featuresYour app is now using SiteMesh 3 and is no longer using SiteMesh 2. NO FURTHER CHANGES NEEDED. Bonus: You can now enjoy multiple layouts on each page! For instance, let's use <html lang="en">
<head>
<meta name="layout" content="googleAnalyticsLayout, main"/>
<title>Home</title>
</head>Once the following simple Pull Request is accepted, you can use 2.x version of the plugin and add the following to Pull Request: Decouple grails-gsp from SiteMesh 2 configurations {
all {
exclude group:'opensymphony', module:'sitemesh'
exclude group:'org.grails', module:'grails-web-gsp-taglib'
exclude group:'org.grails', module:'grails-web-sitemesh'
}
} |
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Hi @codeconsole, thanks for the detailed instructions. I was looking at the changelog and found that some Sitemesh 3 code was introduced in version 2.4.3, for example under the package I have previously completed a 2.4.2 version migration to Jakarta and it works fine, SiteMesh 2 Jakarta version. |
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I have just upgraded GoBoots to SiteMesh 2.4.3, local tests passed, and everything works fine. Next step will be 2.5.0. Thank you @codeconsole |
Hello @rainboyan, I don't understand. No SiteMesh 3 code was introduced into 2.4.3. You can see the changes here: With the plugin, there shouldn't be any refactoring required. |
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@codeconsole The refactoring of GSP I mentioned earlier is not related to SiteMesh upgrades.
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@rainboyan yeah, those classes haven nothing to do with SiteMesh 3. You can expect 2.5 to be synchronized within the next week. Right now we are just waiting on @puneetbehl to merge grails/grails-gsp#364 so that it does not depend on the SiteMesh 2 libraries to be installed. |
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I've clone the Thank you @codeconsole |
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@rainboyan thanks, now that, I'll probably officially 2.5.0 release it within the next week. |
@rainboyan, I am not sure how you got 2.5.x working without customizing grails-gsp? 2.5.x is not a drop in replacement for 2.4.x as it requires initializing a |
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@codeconsole |
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@puneetbehl I have just been adding |
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@puneetbehl what is the plan for Grails 7? Are you wanting both SiteMesh 2 and SiteMesh 3 support? |
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Personally, I am more inclined to remove SiteMesh 2 from Grails 7. But, I would also check with others opinion in the next Grails Engineering Meeting. Thank you for helping us with it. Apart from this, I tried to reach out to you over the email (scott@alwaysvip.com). Can you please confirm if you actually receive any email from me? |
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yeah, that's correct. Your email got overlooked. I just replied. |
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@codeconsole, could you kindly submit the pull-request for removing Sitemesh2? I'm presently engaged in updating Grails Core to Spring Boot 3 and Spring 6. I believe it's necessary to update Grails GSP beforehand as it involves transitioning to Jakarta APIs from |
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@puneetbehl ok, I will look into this. |
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@puneetbehl grails/grails-gsp#459 We still need a 7.0.x branch for https://github.com/grails/grails-gradle-plugin |
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Pull Request for core: #13492 Demo running off of 7.0.x: |
Feature description
Sitemesh 3 already supports JDK 17 which would make it an easier transition to Grails 7.0.
Since 6.0 is taking a while, I think it should be considered to be part of the 6.0 release.
I could help facilitate the development effort if it is agreed to add it.
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