DZone
Java Zone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
  • Refcardz
  • Trend Reports
  • Webinars
  • Zones
  • |
    • Agile
    • AI
    • Big Data
    • Cloud
    • Database
    • DevOps
    • Integration
    • IoT
    • Java
    • Microservices
    • Open Source
    • Performance
    • Security
    • Web Dev
DZone > Java Zone > When Framework is Overkill

When Framework is Overkill

Dapeng Liu user avatar by
Dapeng Liu
·
Feb. 03, 09 · Java Zone · Interview
Like (0)
Save
Tweet
8.73K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

Recently there have been some hot articles about frameworks: Better Java Web Frameworks and Better Java Web Frameworks: ItsNat. Sometimes I've found that frameworks just make life harder. Recently I was assigned a job to create a company's site from scratch. The requirement is relatively simple, less than 10 static HTML pages, literally no server side processing.

I decided to write a simple mini "framework" to aid my client's designer, instead of adpoting an off-the-shelf web framework.

The idea is pretty much the same as most CMS: to keep a big template out and to only let the user (the maintanence designer) touch the content of the page. Yet, I want to provide flexibility to some degree. For example, at least I wanted to do some simple SEO to every page.

Template:

<html>
<head>
<title>{{title}}</title>
<meta name="description" content="{{description}}" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="head">
... ignored for simplicity...
</div>
<div id="content">{{body}}</div>
<div id="footer">... </div>
</body>
</html>

And with the template, the actual page needs only to provide the information like TITLE, BODY, DESCRIPTION:

e.g., "about-us.html":

{{title}} About Us

{{description}} what ever information that you want search engine know

{{body}} ... here is the real content, ignored for simplicity... 

So I need a ServletFilter to intercept the request and to wrap the response from "about-us.html" and to make any necessary subsititutions.  I search the default servlet's output for anything like {{ABC}} and use "String.replace" to try to replace/insert into the template string. Once all is done, I dump the result to the original response. 

I have included my source code below. The BufferedServletOutputStream class is copy-and-pasted from a Google search result, sorry I couldn't find the author's name:

public class StaticSiteTemplate implements Filter {
private Map defaultParameters = new HashMap();
private String template = "";

@Override
public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException {
...
}

@Override
public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
CapturedHttpResponseWrapper wrapper = new CapturedHttpResponseWrapper((HttpServletResponse) response);
chain.doFilter(request, wrapper);
// find tagString originalContent = wrapper.toString();
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile( < a
href = "file://%7b//%7B//w+//%7D//%7D"
mce_href = "file://%7b//%7B//w+//%7D//%7D" >\\{\\{\\w +\\}\\}</a >);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(originalContent);
String result = template;
if (matcher.find()) {
ArrayList breakpointList = new ArrayList();
breakpointList.add(new TemplateBreakupPoint(matcher.group(), matcher.end(), originalContent.length()));
while (matcher.find()) {
breakpointList.get(breakpointList.size() - 1).end = matcher.start();
breakpointList.add(new TemplateBreakupPoint(matcher.group(), matcher.end(), originalContent.length()));
}
for (TemplateBreakupPoint tbp : breakpointList) {
result = result.replace(tbp.key, originalContent.substring(tbp.start, tbp.end).trim());
}
} else {// assume all belong to bodyresult = template.replace("{{body}}", originalContent);}
// replace default params
for (String key : defaultParameters.keySet()) {
result = result.replace(key, defaultParameters.get(key));
}
// dump outputbyte[] buffer = result.getBytes(response.getCharacterEncoding());
response.setContentLength(buffer.length);
response.getOutputStream().write(buffer);
}

public void loadTemplate() throws IOException {...}

...
}

You can view my site as a live demo of this approach here: http://www.nwhholdings.com 

Source code.

Framework

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • Applying Kappa Architecture to Make Data Available Where It Matters
  • How to Utilize Python Machine Learning Models
  • How to Test JavaScript Code in a Browser
  • Why I'm Choosing Pulumi Over Terraform

Comments

Java Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • MVB Program
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends:

DZone.com is powered by 

AnswerHub logo