Using Pebble template engine with Spring Boot

Question

So I'm trying to integrate Pebble templating engine to my spring boot application but I'm confused on how to implement this.

So I've read through their site on how to implement it however it says for Spring MVC which I think not similar with Spring Boot.

I also go to their github page then trying to add their maven dependency to POM.xml but I don't know if I will configure something or it is the same as Thymeleaf or Mustache that are autoconfigured.

Link to their site: http://mitchellbosecke.com/pebble/

Answer 1

Add the starter dependency to your pom.xml:

spring-boot v1

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.pebbletemplates</groupId>
    <artifactId>pebble-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
    <version>2.6.2</version>
</dependency>

OR

spring-boot v2

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.pebbletemplates</groupId>
    <artifactId>pebble-spring-boot-2-starter</artifactId>
    <version>2.6.2</version>
</dependency>

This is enough for autoconfiguration to kick in. This includes:

• a Loader that will pick template files ending in .pebble from /templates/ dir on the classpath
• a PebbleEngine with default settings, configured with the previous loader
• a ViewResolver that will output text/html in UTF-8

PLEASE NOTE: the starter depends on spring-boot-starter-web but is marked as optional, you'll need to add the dependency yourself or configure Spring MVC appropiately.

Boot externalized configuration

A number of properties can be defined in Spring Boot externalized configuration, eg. application.properties, starting with the prefix pebble. See the corresponding PebbleProperties.java for your starter version. Notable properties are:

• pebble.prefix: defines the prefix that will be prepended to the mvc view name. Defaults to /templates/
• pebble.suffix: defines the suffix that will be appended to the mvc view name. Defaults to .pebble
• pebble.cache: enables or disables PebbleEngine caches. Defaults to true
• pebble.contentType: defines the content type that will be used to configure the ViewResolver. Defaults to text/html
• pebble.encoding: defines the text encoding that will be used to configure the ViewResolver. Defaults to UTF-8
• pebble.exposeRequestAttributes: defines whether all request attributes should be added to the model prior to merging with the template for the ViewResolver. Defaults to false
• pebble.exposeSessionAttributes: defines whether all session attributes should be added to the model prior to merging with the template for the ViewResolver. Defaults to false
• pebble.defaultLocale: defines the default locale that will be used to configure the PebbleEngine. Defaults to null
• pebble.strictVariables: enable or disable the strict variable checking in the PebbleEngine. Defaults to false

Customizing Pebble

Pebble extensions

Extensions defined as beans will be picked up and added to the PebbleEngine automatically:

@Bean
public Extension myPebbleExtension1() {
    return new MyPebbleExtension1();
}

@Bean
public Extension myPebbleExtension2() {
    return new MyPebbleExtension2();
}

CAVEAT: Spring will not gather all the beans if they're scattered across multiple @Configuration classes. If you use this mechanism, bundle all Extension @Beans in a single @Configuration class.

Customizing the Loader

The autoconfigurer looks for a bean named pebbleLoader in the context. You can define a custom loader with that name and it will be used to configure the default PebbleEngine:

@Bean
public Loader<?> pebbleLoader() {
    return new MyCustomLoader();
}

PLEASE NOTE: this loader's prefix and suffix will be both overwritten when the ViewResolver is configured. You should use the externalized configuration for changing these properties.

Customizing the PebbleEngine

Likewise, you can build a custom engine and make it the default by using the bean name pebbleEngine:

@Bean
public PebbleEngine pebbleEngine() {
    return new PebbleEngine.Builder().build();
}

Customizing the ViewResolver

And the same goes for the ViewResolver, using the bean name pebbleViewResolver:

@Bean
public PebbleViewResolver pebbleViewResolver() {
    return new PebbleViewResolver();
}

PLEASE NOTE: you need to change the Loader's prefix and suffix to match the custom ViewResolver's values.

Using Pebble for other tasks

The main role of this starter is to configure Pebble for generating MVC View results (the typical HTML). You may define more PebbleEngine/Loader beans for other usage patterns (like generating email bodies). Bear in mind that you should not reuse the default Loader for other Engine instances.