StrutsMenu

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Refactorings

• Migrated to Maven for building and deploying.
• Renamed package from com.fgm.menu to net.sf.navigator.
• Checked in as a new module on SourceForge called "navigator". I liked the name and thought it would be a bit cleaner than "struts-menu" going forward. I'd like to use the same project at SF, just have a new name for the package/releases/files.
• Added the ability to specify dynamic parameters in menu-config.xml. Example:

  page="/velocity.jsp?test=${test} 

• Added a VelocityMenuDisplayer which puts a bunch of stuff in a VelocityContext for creating of menus with Velocity. This might make for an easy way to use this navigation system and build it from a database. Just put your Tree (or whatever you want to use) into the request, and grab it in the template. Here are all the current variables exposed:

    context.put("formatter", new VelocityFormatter(context));
    context.put("now", Calendar.getInstance().getTime());
    context.put("ctxPath", request.getContextPath());

    // see if a name and property were passed in
    if (!StringUtils.isEmpty(name)) {
        Object val1 =
            RequestUtils.lookup(pageContext, name, null, null);

        if (val1 != null) {
            context.put(name, val1);
        }
    }

    // request-scope attributes
    Enumeration enum = request.getAttributeNames();

    while (enum.hasMoreElements()) {
        String name = (String) enum.nextElement();
        Object value = request.getAttribute(name);
        context.put(name, value);
    }

    context.put("request", request);
    context.put("session", request.getSession());
    context.put("menu", menu);
    context.put("displayer", this);

Here is a sample velocity template for rendering a simple menu. It shouldn't be too hard to re-create the existing using Velocity templates.

## Evaluates other macros.
#macro(eval $_macro)$_macro#end

#macro( displayMenu $menu $level )
  #if ($menu.components.size() > 0)
    ## display top menu
    #menuItem($menu $level)
    #foreach ($menu in $menu.components)
      #local ($menu $level)
        #set ($level = $level+1)
        #if ($menu.components.size() > 0) 
          #eval("#displayMenu($menu $level)")
        #else
          #menuItem($menu $level)
        #end
      #end
    #end
  #else
    #menuItem($menu $level)
  #end
#end
  
#macro( menuItem $menu $level )
  #foreach ($i in [0..$level])
      
  #end
  #if ($menu.url) 
    <a href="$menu.url" title="$menu.title">
        $menu.title</a>
  #else 
    $menu.title
  #end
  <br />
#end

#displayMenu($menu 0)

This is configured in your JSP using:

<menu:useMenuDisplayer name="Velocity" config="/table.html"
  bundle="org.apache.struts.action.MESSAGE">
  <menu:displayMenu name="indexMenu"/>
</menu:useMenuDisplayer>

Where config points to a file relative to your webapp. You can also use config="table.html" where table.html is under WEB-INF/classes.

Issues

TODO

• Use XDoclet to generate the .tld file.
• Currently, to do recursion in Velocity templates, I had to use a #local declaration which is in the "whiteboard" directory of Velocities CVS. See velocity's mailing list for more information.
• Improve documentation and examples in Maven docs.
• Edit Maven files to generate distribution files.
• Unit Tests!!

Comments, suggestions or questions are most welcome. If not here, doing it on one of the mailing lists is probably most appropriate.