If you have a springMVC application, normally you want some layout templating framewrok so you don’t have to repeat header/menu/footer in each jsp. One of the most popular choice is tiles. Spring roo generates mvc apps use them as well.

While developing you often want to create a new page, which needs a new tiles definition in one of the tiles definition xml (views.xml). But the application needs a redeploy to se those changes.

For impatiens

If you don’t care about the explanation, here is the solution: add 2 line to your webmvc-config.xml

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 <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer"
       id="tilesConfigurer" >
+  <property name="useMutableTilesContainer">true</property>
+  <property name="checkRefresh">true</property>
   <property name="definitions">
     <list>
       <value>/WEB-INF/layouts/layouts.xml</value>

If you do care about details read on …

Typical springMVC configuration

Unfortunately this will create a BasicTilesContainer, which is unable to reload definitions.

Use a ‘mutable’ TilesContainer

You can replace BasicTilesContainer with CachingTilesContainer by configuring tiles to use a mutable container.

If you would use tiles directly, than the org.apache.tiles.factory.TilesContainerFactory.MUTABLE property should be changed to true. see original tiles docs

If you use spring mvc, than you have to set the useMutableTilesContainer of TilesConfigurer. see original spring 3.1.0.RELEASE source here

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 <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer"
       id="tilesConfigurer" >
+  <property name="useMutableTilesContainer">true</property>
   <property name="definitions">
     <list>
       <value>/WEB-INF/layouts/layouts.xml</value>

This will cause Spring’s TilesConfigurer to use a CachingTilesContainer instead of a BasicTilesContainer

Check for changed tiles definitions

If you want the TilesContainer to check for modifications in tiles definitions you can instruct spring’s TilesConfigurer by adding the checkRefresh property:

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 <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer"
       id="tilesConfigurer" >
   <property name="useMutableTilesContainer">true</property>
+  <property name="checkRefresh">true</property>
   <property name="definitions">
     <list>
       <value>/WEB-INF/layouts/layouts.xml</value>

Under the hood, it will pass this parameter to tiles CachingLocaleUrlDefinitionDAO)