The Template System

An Escenic template set is a set of JSP files that:

  • Have access to a number of beans representing Escenic objects such as articles and sections

  • Have access to a number of Escenic tag libraries providing functionality that cannot easily be achieved using the available beans, JSP expressions and standard JSTL tags

You can organize these JSP files anyway you like. The only requirement is that there is a single "master template" - one JSP file that is called by the Content Engine in response to every user request. Normally this file must be called common.jsp, and located in the publication/WEB-INF/template folder. It is possible to change this default name and location (see The default.properties File), but should not normally be necessary.

In theory you could implement the whole template system in common.jsp, but normal practice is to break the system down into a number of smaller, simpler files. The temp-dev application templates described in this section are broken down in this way. The structure of this template set is, however, just an example: precisely how you organize your templates is up to you.

CSS usage

You will notice that the template examples listed in the following sections contain no CSS or other HTML formatting information. Many elements, on the other hand, are enclosed in HTML div elements with class or id attributes. The common.jsp template contains a reference to a CSS file which contains all formatting instructions required to render the pages. The class/id attributes in the final HTML output are used by the browser to look up the appropriate styles in the referenced CSS file.

In this way, the templates deal only with content and structure, and all layout issues are dealt with in the CSS file. It is possible to completely change the appearance of a site by simply changing the CSS file that is used.