Sitemesh 3 for JVM languages

[Shantanu Kumar]

Hello,

I have few questions about suitability of Sitemesh 3 for JVM
languages:

1. Is SiteMesh 3 strongly tied to Java? How easy it might be for users
of JVM languages (eg. Clojure, Groovy etc.) to use Sitemesh 3? For
example, a requirement to pass a classname for Sitemesh to instantiate
may be unhelpful for Clojure as that needs Ahead-Of-Time compilation.

2. Is Sitemesh 3 strongly tied to the Servlet technology? (The JVM
languages may not depend on Servlets for the web stuff.)

3. Can page organization be expressed in a form other than XML?

Regards,
Shantanu

[Joe Walnes]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 5:39 AM, Shantanu Kumar <kumar.s...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I have few questions about suitability of Sitemesh 3 for JVM
languages:

1. Is SiteMesh 3 strongly tied to Java? How easy it might be for users
of JVM languages (eg. Clojure, Groovy etc.) to use Sitemesh 3? For
example, a requirement to pass a classname for Sitemesh to instantiate
may be unhelpful for Clojure as that needs Ahead-Of-Time compilation.

It's fairly common for other JVM languages to be used with SiteMesh. The actual decorators themselves have no code in them - it's only custom configuration that is done through Java. But the API will work equally well in other languages. In fact, Clojure is particularly well suited for building DSLs that express SM configurations.

 

2. Is Sitemesh 3 strongly tied to the Servlet technology? (The JVM
languages may not depend on Servlets for the web stuff.)

The core of SM3 is web-technology agnostic. Out of the box it comes with bindings for the Servlet API and offline building tools. You can plug it into another framework if you want.

For example, I have SiteMesh bindings for Webbit, which is another JVM web server that does not use the Servlet API. https://github.com/joewalnes/webbit-sitemesh

Any particular framework you are looking at?

 

3. Can page organization be expressed in a form other than XML?

You do not need to use any XML to use SiteMesh. The XML configuration reader is there for convenience, but you can also build the object model yourself.

See http://www.sitemesh.org/configuration.html for comparison of XML vs programatic configuration.

If you need more control, you can always implement your own selection interfaces.

https://github.com/sitemesh/sitemesh3/blob/master/sitemesh/src/main/java/org/sitemesh/DecoratorSelector.java

Hope that helps.

-Joe

Regards,
Shantanu

[Shantanu Kumar]

Thanks for clarifying.

> > 2. Is Sitemesh 3 strongly tied to the Servlet technology? (The JVM
> > languages may not depend on Servlets for the web stuff.)
>
> The core of SM3 is web-technology agnostic. Out of the box it comes with
> bindings for the Servlet API and offline building tools. You can plug it
> into another framework if you want.
>
> For example, I have SiteMesh bindings for Webbit, which is another JVM web

> server that does not use the Servlet API.https://github.com/joewalnes/webbit-sitemesh

>
> Any particular framework you are looking at?

Ring[1] is a widely accepted base web routing library for Clojure,
which is what I was wondering about.

[1] Ring – https://github.com/mmcgrana/ring

Regards,
Shantanu

On Dec 25, 9:30 am, Joe Walnes <j...@walnes.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 5:39 AM, Shantanu Kumar <kumar.shant...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > Hello,
>
> > I have few questions about suitability of Sitemesh 3 for JVM
> > languages:
>
> > 1. Is SiteMesh 3 strongly tied to Java? How easy it might be for users
> > of JVM languages (eg. Clojure, Groovy etc.) to use Sitemesh 3? For
> > example, a requirement to pass a classname for Sitemesh to instantiate
> > may be unhelpful for Clojure as that needs Ahead-Of-Time compilation.
>
> It's fairly common for other JVM languages to be used with SiteMesh. The
> actual decorators themselves have no code in them - it's only custom
> configuration that is done through Java. But the API will work equally well
> in other languages. In fact, Clojure is particularly well suited for
> building DSLs that express SM configurations.
>
> > 2. Is Sitemesh 3 strongly tied to the Servlet technology? (The JVM
> > languages may not depend on Servlets for the web stuff.)
>
> The core of SM3 is web-technology agnostic. Out of the box it comes with
> bindings for the Servlet API and offline building tools. You can plug it
> into another framework if you want.
>
> For example, I have SiteMesh bindings for Webbit, which is another JVM web

> server that does not use the Servlet API.https://github.com/joewalnes/webbit-sitemesh

>
> Any particular framework you are looking at?
>
>
>
> > 3. Can page organization be expressed in a form other than XML?
>
> You do not need to use any XML to use SiteMesh. The XML configuration
> reader is there for convenience, but you can also build the object model
> yourself.
>

> Seehttp://www.sitemesh.org/configuration.htmlfor comparison of XML vs

> programatic configuration.
>
> If you need more control, you can always implement your own selection

> interfaces.https://github.com/sitemesh/sitemesh3/blob/master/sitemesh/src/main/j...