How do I use jsp files in Spring Roo? - spring

Question

I made a simple Roo project in STS. It created several .jspx files, which I guess are the templates. I'd like to be able to put some HTML and CSS in those, but whenever I change anything significant, I get an exception. For example, when I add some basic HTML:
<div><span><p>Hello</p></span></div>
I get this exception:
SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet [msa] in context with path [/msa] threw exception [Request processing failed; nested exception is org.apache.tiles.impl.CannotRenderException: ServletException including path '/WEB-INF/layouts/default.jspx'.] with root cause
org.apache.jasper.JasperException: /WEB-INF/views/homepage/index.jspx (line: 14, column: 6) The content of elements must consist of well-formed character data or markup.
Or let's say I need to loop through a List I get from my controller:
<c:forEach var="announcement" items="${results}">
<option value ="10"><c:out value="${announcement.author}"/></option>
</c:forEach>
Then I get this exception:
SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet [msa] in context with path [/msa] threw exception [Request processing failed; nested exception is org.apache.tiles.impl.CannotRenderException: ServletException including path '/WEB-INF/layouts/default.jspx'.] with root cause
org.apache.jasper.JasperException: /WEB-INF/views/homepage/index.jspx (line: 12, column: 54) The prefix "c" for element "c:forEach" is not bound.
I'm not sure why it's so difficult to make simple changes to this template file. After doing quite a bit of searching, I found that the syntax of .jspx files is different than that of .jsp files, and is not recommended for hand-editing. How do I configure Roo to use .jsp files instead? Is this even possible?
Edit: Here's an example of the whole file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<div xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" xmlns:spring="http://www.springframework.org/tags" xmlns:util="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/util" version="2.0">
<jsp:directive.page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8"/>
<jsp:output omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
<spring:message code="label_homepage_index" htmlEscape="false" var="title"/>
<util:panel id="title" title="${title}">
<spring:message code="application_name" htmlEscape="false" var="app_name"/>
<h3>
<spring:message arguments="${app_name}" code="welcome_titlepane"/>
</h3>
<div><span><p>Hello</p></span></div>
<c:forEach var="announcement" items="${results}">
<option value ="10"><c:out value="${announcement.author}"/></option>
</c:forEach>
</util:panel>
</div>
You can comment out the first example I gave to see the problem with the second. But the issue isn't really these specific cases, it's that I can't use regular HTML in my templates, which will make writing my pages much more difficult. How can I get around that?

Answer 1

Regarding your first example, it seems like you may have put your stuff in the wrong place. Maybe paste the whole file (it's short) so we can see if there's actually an error.
In the second example, the exception says "The prefix "c" for element "c:forEach" is not bound.". That usually means your xmlns prefix probably isn't declared in the jspx header.