URL Paths

URL paths start at the context root "/" by default. If you want to use it with a different context path, just change the servlet mapping in web.xml and override the resourceService bean in the root application context to change the servlet path.

Text Content

Text content that doesn't ome from the JobRepository is rendered using a standard Spring MessageSource. To change it you need to provide a bean in your servlet application context (META-INF/spring/batch/servlet/override/*.xml) with id "messageSource" of type MessageSource. E.g.

<bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource">
   <property name="basename" value="messages"/>
</bean>

loads a resource bundle (as per java.util.Resource) from classpath:messages.properties. See the Spring MVC documentation for more detail on how message sources work.

The message source is a set of key-value pairs where the key is provided by the application and the value is what you want to be rendered. To find all the possible key values you would have to inspect all the Freemarker templates in the resources and manager jars, and also the view bean definitions (where for example the page titles are defined) and controller definitions (for error codes).

(A complete list of message keys would be a great addition to the project. If anyone wants to automate the compilation of that list please feel free to make a contribution.)

Adding a Menu

Create a component of type org.springframework.batch.admin.web.base.Menu in the UI child context (META-INF/spring/batch/servlet/override/*.xml). The Menu has a url property that should point to a controller mapping (relative to the application root context). That's it really.

If you also want the page you add to fit in with the information architecture of the application as a whole, i.e. show the other menus and links, you will want to implement the view for the menu that you add in a specific way. That is: you will use a Freemarker template to render the body of the page, and refer to it in a Spring MVC View definition in your servlet XML configuration. The template can use the standard layout in the application as a parent bean, and that way it inherits the information architecture (menus and styling). Look in the manager jar for META-INF/spring/batch/servlet/manager/manager-context.xml where you will find some examples. They look like this:

<bean name="jobs" parent="standard">
        <property name="attributes">
                <props merge="true">
                        <prop key="body">/manager/jobs/jobs.ftl</prop>
                        <prop key="titleCode">jobs.title</prop>
                        <prop key="titleText">Spring Batch Admin: Jobs</prop>
                </props>
        </property>
</bean>

The only mandatory property in this is the "body", which is the location of a Freemarker template for the main body (business content) of the page. Freemarker templates by default have paths relative to either classpath:/org/springframework/batch/admin/web or /WEB-INF/web (either works but the WEB-INF location is dynamically reloadable at development time). The other properties shown above are to override the page title: the "code" is a key in the Spring MessageSource and the "text" is the default value if the code cannot be resolved.

Modifying Existing Pages

Styles and Branding

To change the colors, fonts, branding and layout of existing pages, you can use a cascading style sheet. The default style sheets are in spring-batch-admin-resources.jar under META-INF/resources/styles. Most of the things you might need to change will be in main.css or local,css. To override the settings here you could put a modified copy of those files in your WAR under /styles at the top level of your applications (the Spring JS ResourceServlet is used to search the context and all jars in that order). Or you could modify the standard view bean or its template (see below) to import a style sheet from a different location.

View Bean Overrides

In the UI each view is a Spring bean, so one way to change the default views is to override those bean definitions in META-INF/spring/batch/servlet/override/*.xml. The existing menu bars and static content are defined in spring-batch-admin-resources.jar, while the dynamic and Batch-specific content are defined in spring-batch-admin-manager.jar. In both cases there are view beans defined in META-INF/spring/batch/servlet/**/*.xml. Some views have html content only and some have json content, in which case the view name ends with .json, e.g. in the manager jar META-INF/spring/batch/servlet/manager/manager-context.xml we have the definitions for the view that renders the list of jobs:

<bean name="jobs" parent="standard">
   <property name="attributes">
      <props merge="true">
         <prop key="body">/manager/jobs/html/jobs.ftl</prop>
         <prop key="titleCode">jobs.title</prop>
         <prop key="titleText">Spring Batch Admin: Jobs</prop>
      </props>
   </property>
</bean>

<bean name="jobs.json" parent="standard.json">
   <property name="attributes">
      <props merge="true">
         <prop key="body">/manager/jobs/json/jobs.ftl</prop>
      </props>
   </property>
</bean>

To override one or other of these you would need to create a Spring config file in META-INF/spring/batch/servlet/override/*.xml and copy the definitions above replacing any of the properties as desired.

Template Overrides

Another way to modify the existing views is to override just the Freemarker templates.

In the JARs the templates are located in sub-directories of org/springframework/batch/admin/web, and you can override them by putting files with the same name and relative path in WEB-INF/web. For example, the whole look and feel would change if you added a file WEB-INF/web/layouts/html/standard.ftl to your application.

Files in the WEB-INF/web location are also reloadable at development time.