Spring Boot Thymeleaf configuration
last modified July 29, 2023
In this article we show how to configure Thymeleaf with Spring Boot web application. When Spring Boot finds Thymeleaf dependency in the Gradle build file, it automatically configures Thymeleaf template engine. This tutorial shows how to do it manually with Java configuration.
Spring is a popular Java application framework. Spring Boot is an effort to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based applications with minimal effort.
Thymeleaf
Thymeleaf is a modern server-side Java template engine for both web and standalone environments. It is built on the concept of natural templates: template files that can be directly opened in browsers and that still display correctly as web pages.
Spring Boot Thymeleaf configuration example
The following example uses Java configuration to set up Thymeleaf with Spring Boot.
build.gradle
...
src
├───main
│ ├───java
│ │ └───com
│ │ └───zetcode
│ │ │ Application.java
│ │ └───config
│ │ WebConfig.java
│ └───resources
│ └───mytemplates
│ index.html
└───test
└───java
This is the project structure. Thymeleaf template files are located in the
custom src/main/resources/mytemplates directory. The default
template directory is src/main/resources/templates.
plugins {
id 'org.springframework.boot' version '3.1.1'
id 'io.spring.dependency-management' version '1.1.0'
id 'java'
}
group = 'com.zetcode'
version = '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'
sourceCompatibility = '17'
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web'
implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf'
}
This is the build file. The spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf
is a starter for building Spring MVC applications with Thymeleaf. The
spring-boot-starter-web is a starter for web applications.
package com.zetcode.config;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Description;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ViewResolver;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.ViewControllerRegistry;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.WebMvcConfigurer;
import org.thymeleaf.spring6.SpringTemplateEngine;
import org.thymeleaf.spring6.view.ThymeleafViewResolver;
import org.thymeleaf.templateresolver.ClassLoaderTemplateResolver;
@Configuration
public class WebConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {
@Bean
@Description("Thymeleaf template resolver serving HTML 5")
public ClassLoaderTemplateResolver templateResolver() {
var templateResolver = new ClassLoaderTemplateResolver();
templateResolver.setPrefix("mytemplates/");
templateResolver.setCacheable(false);
templateResolver.setSuffix(".html");
templateResolver.setTemplateMode("HTML5");
templateResolver.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
return templateResolver;
}
@Bean
@Description("Thymeleaf template engine with Spring integration")
public SpringTemplateEngine templateEngine() {
var templateEngine = new SpringTemplateEngine();
templateEngine.setTemplateResolver(templateResolver());
return templateEngine;
}
@Bean
@Description("Thymeleaf view resolver")
public ViewResolver viewResolver() {
var viewResolver = new ThymeleafViewResolver();
viewResolver.setTemplateEngine(templateEngine());
viewResolver.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
return viewResolver;
}
@Override
public void addViewControllers(ViewControllerRegistry registry) {
registry.addViewController("/").setViewName("index");
}
}
In the WebConfig we configure Thymeleaf and set a view and
controller for the home page. The template engine is configured in Java code.
@Bean
@Description("Thymeleaf template resolver serving HTML 5")
public ClassLoaderTemplateResolver templateResolver() {
This bean defines a template resolver. A template resolver resolves templates
into TemplateResolution objects that contain additional
information such as template mode, caching, prefix and suffix of templates.
ClassLoaderTemplateResolver is used for loading templates located
on the classpath.
templateResolver.setPrefix("mytemplates/");
We set the template directory to mytemplates. When using
ClassLoaderTemplateResolver, there is no classpath:
in the prefix.
templateResolver.setTemplateMode("HTML5");
The template engine will serve HTML5 content.
@Bean
@Description("Thymeleaf template engine with Spring integration")
public SpringTemplateEngine templateEngine() {
var templateEngine = new SpringTemplateEngine();
templateEngine.setTemplateResolver(templateResolver());
return templateEngine;
}
A Thymeleaf template engine with Spring integration is created.
@Bean
@Description("Thymeleaf view resolver")
public ViewResolver viewResolver() {
var viewResolver = new ThymeleafViewResolver();
viewResolver.setTemplateEngine(templateEngine());
viewResolver.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
return viewResolver;
}
Here we configure a bean which creates a ThymeleafViewResolver.
View resolvers are responsible for obtaining View objects for a specific operation and locale.
The view objects are then rendered into HTML file.
@Override
public void addViewControllers(ViewControllerRegistry registry) {
registry.addViewController("/").setViewName("index");
}
In this simple application, we do not have a specific controller class. We define
an automated controller with the addViewController method.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
<head>
<title>Home page</title>
<meta charset="UTF-8"/>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"/>
</head>
<body>
<p>
<span th:text="'Today is: ' + ${#dates.format(#dates.createNow(), 'dd MMM yyyy HH:mm')}" th:remove="tag"></span>
</p>
</body>
</html>
This is a Thymeleaf template file. It displays the current date.
package com.zetcode;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
@SpringBootApplication
public class Application {
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}
}
This code sets up the Spring Boot application. The @SpringBootApplication
enables auto-configuration and component scanning.
$ ./gradlew bootRun
We start the application.
$ curl localhost:8080
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Home page</title>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
</head>
<body>
<p>
Today is: 21 Jul 2023 17:08
</p>
</body>
</html>
In this article we have created a Spring Boot web application with Thymeleaf template engine. We showed how to configure Thymeleaf.