sitemesh:write default property value

[morrica]

Older versions of sitemesh supported the ability to provide a "default" for a property if it was not found in the page being decorated. Is this functionality available in sitemesh 3?

Something like <sitemesh:write property="meta.description" default="My default description"/> or <sitemesh:write property="meta.description">My default description</sitemesh:write>

Seem like they would make sense but neither work. I am unable to locate the <sitemesh:write> code in the source to examine any additional parameters that might be available for setting the default.

If this functionality currently exists please let me know. If not, I think it would be a very useful feature to add.

[codeconsole]

Hi @morrica,

It looks like this was intended, but does not appear to be working in some cases.

The source for sitemesh:write is here

You can see where it should be setting the default contents: https://github.com/sitemesh/sitemesh3/blob/1872f3c4c954257169cff50840fa916b23d14ee0/sitemesh/src/main/java/org/sitemesh/content/tagrules/decorate/SiteMeshWriteRule.java#L67-L69

[codeconsole]

The correct syntax is <sitemesh:write property="meta.description">My default description</sitemesh:write> I'll try to put together a demo in the next few days.

[morrica]

@codeconsole I tried that syntax. Didn't work. The default is not used. Could it be an issue with my setup? I am using spring boot 3.1.4 with the following sitemesh dependencies:

<dependency>                                             
    <groupId>org.sitemesh</groupId>                      
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-sitemesh</artifactId>
    <version>3.2.0-M2</version>                          
    <type>pom</type>                                     
</dependency>                                            
<dependency>                                             
    <groupId>org.sitemesh</groupId>                      
    <artifactId>sitemesh</artifactId>                    
    <version>3.2.0-M2</version>                          
</dependency>                                            

[codeconsole]

@morrica might be a bug, let me look into it

[codeconsole]

@morrica so it looks like for SiteMesh 3 it was never designed to work that way. It only showed the default content if blank content was being decorated. I am not quite sure the scenario where one would decorate null content, but that was the design.

I just updated sitemesh:write to now also display the default content if the property is not found so <sitemesh:write property="meta.description">My default description</sitemesh:write> should now work and display My default description if that description meta tag is not on the page.

You can test it out by using the latest SNAPSHOT build.

  <repositories>
    <repository>
      <id>sonatype-snapshots</id>
      <name>SonaType Snapshot Repository</name>
      <url>https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/</url>
    </repository>
  </repositories>
...
<dependency>                                             
  <groupId>org.sitemesh</groupId>                      
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-sitemesh</artifactId>
  <version>3.2.0-SNAPSHOT</version>                                
</dependency>                                            
<dependency>                                             
  <groupId>org.sitemesh</groupId>                      
  <artifactId>sitemesh</artifactId>                    
  <version>3.2.0-SNAPSHOT</version>                          
</dependency> 

You can resolve it using the SNAPSHOT repository: https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/

or download the latest jar directly from here

Please let me know if that works for you.

[morrica]

@codeconsole Thank you very much!