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Using FreeMarker Views in Spring MVC

[Last Updated: Sep 20, 2017]

This example demonstrates how to use FreeMarker templates as the view technology in a Spring MVC application.

Example

Maven dependencies

pom.xml

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.freemarker</groupId>
   <artifactId>freemarker</artifactId>
   <version>2.3.26-incubating</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
   <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
   <artifactId>spring-context-support</artifactId>
   <version>4.3.10.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

spring-context-support provides support for integrating common third-party libraries into Spring application context which includes template engines (FreeMarker, JasperReports, Velocity).

Java Config class

@EnableWebMvc
@Configuration
@ComponentScan
public class MyWebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

  @Override
  public void configureViewResolvers (ViewResolverRegistry registry) {
      registry.freeMarker();
  }

  @Bean
  public FreeMarkerConfigurer freeMarkerConfigurer() {
      FreeMarkerConfigurer configurer = new FreeMarkerConfigurer();
      configurer.setTemplateLoaderPath("/WEB-INF/views/");
      return configurer;
  }
}
  • FreeMarkerConfigurer

    This Spring class wraps an instance of freemarker.template.Configuration which is the main entry point into the FreeMarker API.

  • WebMvcConfigurerAdapter#configureViewResolvers

    The method ViewResolverRegistry#freeMarker() registers an instance of FreeMarkerViewResolver as bean. Alternatively, we can register the bean ourselves:
        @Bean
        public ViewResolver freeMarkerViewResolver () {
            FreeMarkerViewResolver resolver = new FreeMarkerViewResolver();
            resolver.setSuffix(".ftl");
            return resolver;
        }
    


Writing a Spring Controller

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/")
public class MyController {
  
  @RequestMapping
  public String handleRequest (Model model) {
      model.addAttribute("msg", "A message from the controller");
      model.addAttribute("time", LocalTime.now());
      return "my-page";
  }
}

The FreeMarker template

src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/views/my-page.ftl

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<body>
<h2>FreeMarker View</h3>
	<div> Message: ${msg}</div>
	<div> Time: ${time} </div>
</body>
</html>

More info about the FreeMarker template engine can be found here.

Output

The generated html:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<body>
<h2>FreeMarker View</h3>
	<div> Message: A message from the controller</div>
	<div> Time: 22:39:13.512 </div>
</body>
</html>

Example Project

Dependencies and Technologies Used:

  • spring-webmvc 4.3.10.RELEASE: Spring Web MVC.
  • spring-context-support 4.3.10.RELEASE: Spring Context Support.
  • freemarker 2.3.26-incubating: FreeMarker is a "template engine"; a generic tool to generate text output based on templates.
  • javax.servlet-api 3.1.0 Java Servlet API
  • JDK 1.8
  • Maven 3.3.9

FreeMarker View in Spring MVC Select All Download
  • spring-freemarker-view-example
    • src
      • main
        • java
          • com
            • logicbig
              • example
        • webapp
          • WEB-INF
            • views
              • my-page.ftl

    See Also