I want to develop a pretty standard webproject with all basic functionalities such as landingpage, user registration, login and so on.
Since I'm familiar with Java and Spring, I set up the a project with Spring Roo including DBRE from an MySql database, MVC and Spring security.
Right now I'm wondering how to go on with the UI. I would like integrate a template from twitter-bootstrap and I already downloaded a working example project (no apache tiles structure). I'm not very familiar with Apache tiles and frontend design in general so my question is, what would be the best way to integrate it and bypass the standard CRUD design?
Is it only necessary to design a new default-layout and reuse existing .jspx files? Also is it possible to take the existing bootstrap.jsp template which uses sitemesh from the bootstrap-example as a new template and reuse existing .jspx files?
Reuse is important since there are still entities which will change in future. Appreciate any help!
I haven't personally used twitter-bootstrap, but I am fairly familiar with the Spring Roo structure.
My first bit of advice would be to just simply not use their UI stuff. Nothing says you have to generated your Controllers with scafolding, which takes the scafolded classes and auto-generates the CRUD methods and UI peices for you. In fact, in my last 4 projects, I did all the UI coding myself (I still used Tiles w/JSPs, and let Roo make all the relavent tiles configs and resource bundles). You can ALWAYS generate a plan Controller and use Roo for everything except the View pieces.
I don't see why you couldn't use the bootstrap.jsp you speak of. The Tiles implementation is done using the TilesViewResolver, I believe, which should be configured in the application_context.xml (or whatever Roo calls the context XML file). Just replace the TileViewResolver setup with something else. I would suggest reading up on Chapter 17.5 Resolving Views in the Spring Reference guide. I think for JSPs you want to use InternalResourceViewResolver.