Using SiteMesh with RequestDispatcher's forward()

Question

I\'m attempting to integrate SiteMesh into a legacy application using Tomcat 5 as my a container. I have a main.jsp that I\'m decorating with a simple decorator

Answer 1

My understanding is that SiteMesh is integrated into the application as a Servlet filter. By default, servlet filters are only invoked against the original incoming request (in your case, the request to the servlet). Subsequent forward or include requests are not passed throuh the filter, and therefore will not be passed through sitemesh.

You can, however, instruct the filter to be invoked on forwards, using something like this:

    sitemesh
    MyServlet
    FORWARD

Which instructs the container to only operate on FORWARD requests. The other options are INCLUDE and REQUEST, you can have several elements.

So your options are to either change your filter config to specify FORWARD, or to change your filter-mapping to match the servlet path, rather than the JSP path. Either one should work.