Netbeans 8 won't reload static Thymeleaf files - spring

Question

I am using Spring Boot and Thymeleaf via Maven. I can't seem to get Netbeans to automatically re-deploy any of my Thymeleaf template files when I make changes. In order to see the changes I need to do a full clean/build/run. This takes way too long.
The templates are in src/main/resources/templates. I have an application.properties file in src/main/resources/ with spring.thymeleaf.cache=false and spring.template.cache=false.
I have "Compile on save", "Copy resources on save" and "Deploy on save" turned on in the project settings.
My maven build produces a war file that Netbeans deploys to Tomcat and I am using the annotation #EnableAutoConfiguration.
Netbeans does hot deploy changes to the Java classes but not for any of the static files in src/main/resources/.
Software in use:
Mac OS X 10.9.4
Java 1.8
Netbeans 8.0.1
Tomcat 8.0.12
Spring Boot 1.1.7
Thymeleaf 2.1.3 (via Spring Boot)
Any guidance is much appreciated.

Answer 1

An option would be to look into configuring Thymeleaf's FileTemplateResolver
To do that with Spring Boot, define a bean implementing the ITemplateResolver interface with the name defaultTemplateResolver, when present, Spring Boot would take it instead of its default, here is how that would be done, and assuming you have component scanning active so this configuration class will be picked up automatically:
#Configuration
public class ThymeleafConfiguration {
#Bean
public ITemplateResolver defaultTemplateResolver() {
TemplateResolver resolver = new FileTemplateResolver();
resolver.setSuffix(".html");
resolver.setPrefix("path/to/your/templates");
resolver.setTemplateMode("HTML5");
resolver.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
resolver.setCacheable(false);
return resolver;
}
}
The prefix should be a relative path that when added to your runtime working directory (cwd), would resolve to the templates directory. If you are unsure, set that to the full absolute path, but then there would be no point of the above bean. Since setting the spring.thymeleaf.prefix property to an absolute path would probably have the same effect.

Answer 2

Have been looking for a solution to my eclipse+thymeleaf+sprint boot reloading templates dynamically for a log while....
Finally I found this question here and spring.thymeleaf.cache=false and spring.template.cache=false fixed my issue.

Answer 3

Besides setting the Thymeleaf views as non-cacheable by ie. spring.thymeleaf.cache=false in your application.properties,
try explicitly defining the resource directory in your pom.xml:
<build>
...
<resources>
<resource>
<directory>src/main/resources</directory>
</resource>
</resources>
...
</build>

Answer 4

To deal with that, the spring-boot-maven-plugin in the pom.xml should seems like this:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>springloaded</artifactId>
<version>1.2.0.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>
And add this to your application properties:
spring.thymeleaf.cache=false
It usually works to Spring beans too.

Answer 5

Just to say this works nicely for me using an external instance of Tomcat:
Run Tomcat with JRebel or Spring Loaded javaagent as a VM option
Turn off "Compile on save", "Copy resources on save" and "Deploy on save"
Add a custom action in Netbeans that executes the compile goal
Run that when you want to see an update
http://wiki.netbeans.org/MavenBestPractices#Binding_Maven_goals_to_IDE_actions
https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-loaded
https://zeroturnaround.com/software/jrebel/quickstart/standalone/
Or you can you use the embedded tomcat with spring-boot-maven-plugin and Spring Loaded instead, then you won't need the compile action:
https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/howto-hotswapping.html

Answer 6

I had this problem too. I notice Netbeans reload automaticaly webpages that are in
/src/main/webapp/
You have to move all your templates from /src/main/resources/templates to this directory.
Also you have to change the spring boot property on application.properties file:
spring.thymeleaf.prefix=templates/
That works for me

Answer 7

I had this same issue on Netbeans 8.0.2 and Windows. I was building a WAR to be deployed to Tomcat, but I wanted to try out Spring Boot. It looks like newer versions of Netbeans might resolve this with the Spring Boot plugin or using Eclipse. It seemed nutty to swap IDEs over something tiny like this. I tried all of the suggestions I could find; spring loaded, caching properties, extending the TemplateResolver...I couldn't get any of them to work. I finally stumbled on this blog and following these instructions solved my issue.