How to render custom JSP tags

Question

We have our own custom JSP tag libraries (some of them extend the Struts tags, but many do not) and want those to render correctly in the design view.
Is that supported by NitroX Struts, or will it only work with built-in Struts tags?
If it is supported, how does one get NitroX to run the custom tags?

Answer 1

It is possible to customize many aspects of the rendering of a custom tag. This is done using a combination of an M7 specific metadata, and standard css rules.
For example, you can change the label, icon and border of a custom tag by doing the following steps:
1) Create a folder named "nitrox" where your tld file is located. For example if you have "/WEB-INF/app.tld" then create a
folder "/WEB-INF/nitrox/".
2) In the nitrox folder created above, create a file named "app.tlei" (for Tag Library Extra Information). The file name used here should match the name of the tld file. In this case "app".
3) Paste the following content in the app.tlei file:
<taglib-extrainfo>
<css-uri>app.css</css-uri> <!-- an optional css file relative to this tlei file -->
<tag name="myTag">
<display-name>My Tag</display-name> <!-- The name displayed in the Tag Libraries view -->
<rendering-label>{tag-name} ({name})</rendering-label> <!-- This will display the value of the "name" attribute in addition to the tag name in the tag view in the JSP design editor. -->
<small-icon>images/myTag.gif</small-icon> <!-- The image uri relative to this tlei file. This is used in the Tag Libraries view and in the JSP design editor.-->
</tag>
</taglib-extrainfo>
All customization tags are optional.
4) Create the css file referenced from the tlei file above (in this example app.css in the same directory containing the tlei file).
5) Paste the following content in the app.css file:
myTag {border: 1 solid red; display: "inline"}
This will render the tag as inline (i.e as one graphical object) even if the tag has nested content.
In addition, you can use any standard css style property.
You can customize other tags in the same fashion.
If a custom tag inherits from a Struts tag, then the tag can inherit the full built-in tag customization as shown in the following example:
Suppose you have a tag named "myText" that extends the Struts html:text form field tag. To inherit the NitroX html:text customization you follow the steps:
1) insert the following in the tlei file described above:
<tag name="myText">
<inherit taglib-uid="http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/tags-html" tag-name="text" />
</tag>
2) Insert the following css rule in the css file referenced from the tlei file:
myText {m7-inherit: "input-text"; display: inline}
This will inherit the built-in css style for form text fields.
Likewise, you can inherit the other Struts tags css styles by using the following rules:
myPassword {m7-inherit: "input-password"; display: inline}
myCancel {m7-inherit: "input-submit"; display: inline}
myCheckbox {m7-inherit: "input-checkbox"; display: inline}
myRadio {m7-inherit: "input-radio"; display: inline}
mySelect {m7-inherit: "select"; display: inline}
myTextarea {m7-inherit: "textarea"; display: inline}
3) The inherited tag library file (in this example the struts-html.tld), must also be present under the WEB-INF directory.
M7 Support