Using Tiles framework without Struts2

Step 1. Update your web application configuration (web.xml)

<context-param>
                <description>Tiles configuration file</description>
                <param-name>
                        org.apache.tiles.impl.BasicTilesContainer.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG
                </param-name>
                <param-value>/WEB-INF/classes/tiles.xml, /WEB-INF/tiles.xml</param-value>
        </context-param>
        <servlet>
                <servlet-name>tiles</servlet-name>
                <servlet-class>
                        org.apache.tiles.web.startup.TilesServlet
                </servlet-class>
                <load-on-startup>2</load-on-startup>
        </servlet>
        <servlet>
                <servlet-name>tiles_dispatch</servlet-name>
                <servlet-class>
                        org.apache.tiles.web.util.TilesDispatchServlet
                </servlet-class>
        </servlet>
        <servlet-mapping>
                <servlet-name>tiles_dispatch</servlet-name>
                <url-pattern>*.tiles</url-pattern>
        </servlet-mapping>

Step 2. Add tiles.xml in your web application archive (WAR)

Place Tiles configuration to /WEB-INF or /WEB-INF/classes.

tiles.xml example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><!DOCTYPE tiles-definitions PUBLIC
       "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Tiles Configuration 2.0//EN"
       "http://tiles.apache.org/dtds/tiles-config_2_0.dtd">
<tiles-definitions>
        <definition name="test" template="index.jsp">
        </definition>
</tiles-definitions>

Step 3. Place your "index.jsp" in root of WAR archive.

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
    pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Test page</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h3>Success...</h3>
</body>
</html>

Step 4. Copy Tiles libraries.

Copy Tiles libraries to WEB-INF/lib (tiles-.jar and common-.jar).

Step 5. Create and deploy your WAR archive.

Run web application in web container (like Tomcat) and navigate url http://localhost:8080/mywebapp/test.tiles

Child pages

Step 1. Update your web application configuration (web.xml)

Step 2. Add tiles.xml in your web application archive (WAR)

Step 3. Place your "index.jsp" in root of WAR archive.

Step 4. Copy Tiles libraries.

Step 5. Create and deploy your WAR archive.

Step 6. Create your custom tiles definitions.