"resources" folder not being created in WEB-INF directory in Spring Boot app - spring

Question

I have a Spring Boot application in development that I recently upgraded from Spring 3 to Spring 4 (spring-boot-starter-parent 1.3.5.RELEASE to 1.4.6.RELEASE).
I have, within my src/main/resources/templates directory, an html template (called 'test-template.html') which I have been using to create HTML email content, using Thymeleaf's TemplateEngine. (This was working fine prior to upgrading to version 4.)
The problem I have at present is that no "templates" directory is being created within WEB-INF on the server (or within the relevant directory within "target", upon building with Maven). As a result, I'm getting the following:
java.io.FileNotFoundException: Could not open ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/templates/test-template.html]
The following is my configuration class for Thymeleaf. (I am using manual configuration since I'm using Thymeleaf only for email template processing, and thus don't want Spring Boot to configure a Thymeleaf view resolver. I get the same error with auto-configuration, however.)
#Configuration
public class ThymeleafConfig implements ApplicationContextAware {
private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ThymeleafConfig.class);
private ApplicationContext applicationContext;
public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext applicationContext) {
this.applicationContext = applicationContext;
}
#Bean
public SpringTemplateEngine templateEngine() {
SpringTemplateEngine engine = new SpringTemplateEngine();
engine.setEnableSpringELCompiler(true);
engine.setTemplateResolver(templateResolver());
return engine;
}
private ITemplateResolver templateResolver() {
SpringResourceTemplateResolver resolver = new SpringResourceTemplateResolver();
resolver.setApplicationContext(applicationContext);
resolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/templates/");
resolver.setSuffix(".html");
resolver.setTemplateMode(TemplateMode.HTML);
return resolver;
}
}
Here's the pom.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.example</groupId>
<artifactId>myapp</artifactId>
<version>1.0.10-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>war</packaging>
<name>myapp</name>
<description>blah blah</description>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>1.4.6.RELEASE</version>
<relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
</parent>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
<start-class>com.matchingchina.AcumenApplication</start-class>
<thymeleaf.version>3.0.2.RELEASE</thymeleaf.version>
<thymeleaf-layout-dialect.version>2.1.1</thymeleaf-layout-dialect.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-tx</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-security</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-security-taglibs</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jdbc</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>mysql</groupId>
<artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
<version>5.1.6</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.assertj</groupId>
<artifactId>assertj-core</artifactId>
<version>3.4.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.tiles</groupId>
<artifactId>tiles-jsp</artifactId>
<version>3.0.5</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
<artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
<version>1.2</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet.jsp</groupId>
<artifactId>jsp-api</artifactId>
<version>2.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.imgscalr</groupId>
<artifactId>imgscalr-lib</artifactId>
<version>4.2</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>commons-lang</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-lang</artifactId>
<version>2.6</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.sendgrid</groupId>
<artifactId>sendgrid-java</artifactId>
<version>3.2.1</version>
</dependency>
<!-- WEBJARS -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
<artifactId>bootstrap</artifactId>
<version>3.3.6</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
<artifactId>font-awesome</artifactId>
<version>4.6.1</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>

Answer 1

Change /WEB-INF/templates/ to classpath:/template/. On the classpath doesn't necessary mean on the web context path.