IN28MINUTES

Spring Boot - Integrating Static Content - Javascript (JS) and CSS files

Dec 9, 2017
5 minute read

This guide will help you create a simple web application with Spring Boot. We will add static content (css and js) and use it from a JSP view.

You will learn

  • How to bootstrap a simple project with Spring Initializr?
  • How to initialize a basic web application for Spring Boot?
  • How to add a JSP for web application?
  • How to add static content - JS and CSS?

Spring Boot Courses

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10 Step Reference Courses

Tools you will need

  • Maven 3.0+ is your build tool
  • Your favorite IDE. We use Eclipse.
  • JDK 1.8+

Overview of the Web application

We will build a static todo page (un-formatted) rendered using a jsp.

Files

Following screenshot shows eclipse project with all the files we would create.

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A brief overview of all files

  • SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplication.java - Spring Boot Application class. This initializes the Spring Boot application with auto configuration.
  • WelcomeController.java - A Controller with a method to redirect to the view - jsp.
  • welcome.jsp - The view - using the custom js and css.
  • application.properties - This is typically used to configure frameworks in Spring Boot. In this example, we would configure our view resolver in application.properties.
  • custom.css - contains some basic css.
  • custom.js - contains a javascript alert.

Complete project on Github : https://github.com/in28minutes/spring-boot-examples/tree/master/spring-boot-web-application-bootstrap-jquery

Bootstrapping web application with Spring Initializr

Creating a Web application with Spring Initializr is a cake walk.

Spring Initializr http://start.spring.io/ is great tool to bootstrap your Spring Boot projects.

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As shown in the image above, following steps have to be done

  • Launch Spring Initializr and choose the following
    • Choose com.in28minutes.springboot.web.application as Group
    • Choose spring-boot-web-application-bootstrap-jquery as Artifact
    • Choose following dependencies
      • Web
      • Actuator
      • DevTools
  • Click Generate Project.
  • Import the project into Eclipse.
  • If you want to understand all the files that are part of this project, you can go here.

Project Dependencies

Spring Boot Starter Web provides all the dependencies and the auto configuration need to develop web applications. It is the first dependency we would use.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>

We want to use JSP as the view. Default embedded servlet container for Spring Boot Starter Web is tomcat. To enable support for JSP’s, we would need to add a dependency on tomcat-embed-jasper.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
    <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Configuring a View Resolver

We would have our jsp’s in /WEB-INF/jsp/. We would need to configure the view resolver with the prefix and suffix.

spring.mvc.view.prefix=/WEB-INF/jsp/
spring.mvc.view.suffix=.jsp

Controller

Lets add in a simple controller redirecting to the view.

/src/main/java/com/in28minutes/springboot/tutorial/basics/application/configuration/WelcomeController.java

@Controller
public class WelcomeController {    
    @RequestMapping("/welcome")
    public String loginMessage(){
        return "welcome";
    }
}

The url to this controlle method will be http://localhost:8080/welcome

Adding a view

Let’s create a simple with a basic HTML structure. We will create a basic table which we would want to format a little later.

/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/welcome.jsp

<html>
<head>
    <title>Welcome</title>
</head>
<body>
    <div class="container">
        <table class="table table-striped">
            <caption>Your todos are</caption>
            <thead>
                <tr>
                    <th>Description</th>
                    <th>Target Date</th>
                    <th>Is it Done?</th>
                    <th>Edit</th>
                    <th>Delete</th>
                </tr>
            </thead>
            <tbody>
                    <tr>
                        <td>Todo 1</td>
                        <td>10/12/2017</td>
                        <td>No</td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/edit-todo">Edit Todo</a></td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/delete-todo">Delete Todo</a></td>
                    </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>
        <div>
            <a class="btn btn-default" href="/add-todo">Add a Todo</a>
            
        </div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Adding Static Content CSS and JS

The recommended folder for static content is /src/main/resources/static.

We will create the css as shown below. It give a light blue background color to the body of the page.

/src/main/resources/static/css/custom.css

body {
    background-color: lightblue;
}

We will create a custom js file throwing an alert

/src/main/resources/static/js/custom.js

alert("I'm active");

Using JS and CSS in View

Referring to JS file

<script src="js/custom.js"></script>

Referring to jQuery js

<link href="css/custom.css"
        rel="stylesheet">

Complete updated view is shown below.

/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/welcome.jsp

<html>
<head>
    <title>Welcome</title>
    <link href="css/custom.css"
        rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body>
    <div class="container">
        <table class="table table-striped">
            <caption>Your todos are</caption>
            <thead>
                <tr>
                    <th>Description</th>
                    <th>Target Date</th>
                    <th>Is it Done?</th>
                    <th>Edit</th>
                    <th>Delete</th>
                </tr>
            </thead>
            <tbody>
                    <tr>
                        <td>Todo 1</td>
                        <td>10/12/2017</td>
                        <td>No</td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/edit-todo">Edit Todo</a></td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/delete-todo">Delete Todo</a></td>
                    </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>
        <div>
            <a class="btn btn-default" href="/add-todo">Add a Todo</a>
            
        </div>
        <script src="js/custom.js"></script>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

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Next Steps

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Complete Code Example

/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.in28minutes.springboot.web.application</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-web-application-bootstrap-jquery</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>spring-boot-web-application-bootstrap-jquery</name>
    <description>Spring Boot Tutorial - Adding Bootstrap and jQuery to Web Application</description>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.0.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath /> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
            <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>spring-snapshots</id>
            <name>Spring Snapshots</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>true</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </repository>
        <repository>
            <id>spring-milestones</id>
            <name>Spring Milestones</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>false</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </repository>
    </repositories>

    <pluginRepositories>
        <pluginRepository>
            <id>spring-snapshots</id>
            <name>Spring Snapshots</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>true</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </pluginRepository>
        <pluginRepository>
            <id>spring-milestones</id>
            <name>Spring Milestones</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>false</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </pluginRepository>
    </pluginRepositories>


</project>

/src/main/java/com/in28minutes/springboot/tutorial/basics/application/configuration/SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplication.java

package com.in28minutes.springboot.tutorial.basics.application.configuration;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplication.class, args);
    }
}

/src/main/java/com/in28minutes/springboot/tutorial/basics/application/configuration/WelcomeController.java

package com.in28minutes.springboot.tutorial.basics.application.configuration;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

@Controller
public class WelcomeController {    
    @RequestMapping("/welcome")
    public String loginMessage(){
        return "welcome";
    }
}

/src/main/resources/application.properties

spring.mvc.view.prefix=/WEB-INF/jsp/
spring.mvc.view.suffix=.jsp
logging.level.org.springframework.web=INFO

/src/main/resources/static/css/custom.css

body {
    background-color: lightblue;
}

/src/main/resources/static/js/custom.js

alert("I'm active");

/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/welcome.jsp

<html>
<head>
    <title>Welcome</title>
    <link href="css/custom.css"
        rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body>
    <div class="container">
        <table class="table table-striped">
            <caption>Your todos are</caption>
            <thead>
                <tr>
                    <th>Description</th>
                    <th>Target Date</th>
                    <th>Is it Done?</th>
                    <th>Edit</th>
                    <th>Delete</th>
                </tr>
            </thead>
            <tbody>
                    <tr>
                        <td>Todo 1</td>
                        <td>10/12/2017</td>
                        <td>No</td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/edit-todo">Edit Todo</a></td>
                        <td><a class="btn btn-warning" href="/delete-todo">Delete Todo</a></td>
                    </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>
        <div>
            <a class="btn btn-default" href="/add-todo">Add a Todo</a>
            
        </div>
        <script src="js/custom.js"></script>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

/src/test/java/com/in28minutes/springboot/tutorial/basics/application/configuration/SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplicationTests.java

package com.in28minutes.springboot.tutorial.basics.application.configuration;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringRunner;

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@SpringBootTest
public class SpringBootWebApplicationBootstrapJqueryApplicationTests {

    @Test
    public void contextLoads() {
    }

}

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