Configuring velocity within a tomcat web application. (Cookbook wanted)

Question

Hi all,

I have recently been introduced to the Velocity project.

I have written a template and have run it as a simple Java application.

Integration within my existing web project has not been that easy.

Can anyone supply a cookbook for integrating Velocity and Tomcat?

Thanks all!

Answer 1

Tomcat is a servlet container; you don't need to integrate Velocity with it but rather with your application. How exactly that should be done depends on your application:

• If you're using Spring, it has VelocityViewResolver available along with instructions on how to set it up.
• If you're using straight servlets / JSP take a look at VelocityViewServlet
• Other frameworks (Struts / etc...) may or may not have built-in Velocity integration; take a look at this page (bottom section) for more details.

Answer 2

The straightforward way is to define a VelocityViewServlet in web.xml

<servlet>
 <servlet-name>view</servlet-name>
 <servlet-class>org.apache.velocity.tools.view.servlet.VelocityViewServlet</servlet-class>
 <init-param>
   <param-name>org.apache.velocity.properties</param-name>
   <param-value>/WEB-INF/velocity.properties</param-value>
 </init-param>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>view</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>*.vm</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

In velocity.properties

#resource loaders
resource.loader = production

production.resource.loader.class = org.apache.velocity.tools.view.WebappResourceLoader

Then put your template at the root of your webapp and access it from the web browser using its name as the URL. e.g.

http://localhost:8080/index.vm