Controller layer

Now that we have two different rendering technologies in the view layer we need to indicate which one to use. One way to do this would be to define a request parameter or session attribute that would be maintained at each layer. This would require changes to our existing controllers and creates a contract with the client. A requirement like this scattered layers and platforms can introduce errors and overhead. A better alternative is to simply reconfigure the controllers creating new instances of each desired controller class, each configured with the new GI view name.

Our final configuration change completes the GI enabled Spring application. Our controller layer now supports two different paths, one mapping for GI in addition to the original JSP.


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GI Setup

You will need to download the community edition of the GI toolkit (http://www.tibco.com/mk/gi/) as a pre-requisite. This will provide both the run time support for our application's client pages and a browser based development IDE.
JSX directories

"JSX" is GI's arbitrary namespace convention. It stands for JavaScript and XML, the key technologies GI uses. You'll see it used throughout GI solutions.

To get GI optimally set up, put GI's JSX and JSXAPPS directories at the root of the Webapp directory. The JSX directory is a simple copy and paste of the /TIBCO/gi/3.1/JSX directory. The JSXAPPS directory contains a single subdirectory with your application in it. This directory convention is a requirement of GI.

For additional productivity during development, you may wish to copy the GI Builder directory into the Webapp directory. Simply copy the doc, GI_Builder directories and GI_Builder.html from /TIBCO/gi/3.1 to the root of your Webapp directory. You will not want to deploy the GI Builder assets to your production Webserver. However, having them in this location allows you to edit GI artifacts in place without a constant copy and merge cycle from the TIBCO installation directories to your workspace.

Your directory structure should look like this: