Requirement

WebWind framework requires:

• Java 5 or above.
• Servlet 2.4 compatible Java web server (or above).
• An IoC container such as Spring or Guice.

WebWind does NOT manage any web components but requests all from IoC container.

Configurations

Configurations of WebWind are simple. Do following steps:

Declare DispatcherServlet in web.xml

First please add a Servlet declaration in your web.xml file:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.expressme.webwind.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>container</param-name>
        <param-value>Guice</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>modules</param-name>
        <param-value>org.expressme.sample.BlogModule</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>template</param-name>
        <param-value>Velocity</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>0</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Note that all parameters' names and values are CASE-SENSITIVE.

The parameter container is used to specify your IoC container. WebWind supports two build-in IoC containers Spring and Guice.

If you want to use other IoC containers, you can specify the full class name. See how to integrate other IoC containers.

The parameter template is used to specify how to render the web page. WebWind supports two build-in templates Jsp and Velocity.

The Jsp is the default template. If you specify Velocity as template engine, another velocity.properties file is needed and must be put in /WEB-INF/.

If you want to use other template engine such as FreeMarker, see how to integrate other template engines.

<load-on-startup> is the standard option in Servlet configurations. Setting to 0 to make web server initialize the Servlet on startup immediately.

It is very important that the url-pattern MUST be set to / in servlet-mapping section. Struts (or other similiar MVC framework) uses *.do as URL mapping, but WebWind gives you completely freedom to organize your URL structure. Such URLs are supported:

• /blog/display/20090909
• /post/2009/09/09/12345.html
• /user/1002/35af98c260_1.js

So the URL / MUST be mapped to the DispatcherServlet provided by WebWind.

If you choose Guice as your IoC container, the module parameter is needed, and its value specify the full class name of module required by Guice.

If you choose Spring as your IoC container, you need add following section into web.xml to start Spring before WebWind loaded:

<listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>

The default configuration file of Spring is applicationContext.xml which should be put in /WEB-INF/.

That's all configurations! No extra configuration files!

Continue with first 'Hello, world' application.

Alternative Declaration

If you already have a default Servlet which is mapped to /, WebWind provides another choose of DispatcherFilter. The declaration is just like the DispatcherServlet:

<filter>
    <filter-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <filter-class>org.expressme.webwind.DispatcherFilter</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>container</param-name>
        <param-value>Guice</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>modules</param-name>
        <param-value>org.expressme.sample.BlogModule</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>template</param-name>
        <param-value>Velocity</param-value>
    </init-param>
</filter>

<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

The only differences are:

• No configuration of <load-on-startup>.
• The value of <url-pattern> are /*, not /.