Spring Boot + Bootstrap + Thymeleaf Rich Text Editor

July 06, 2020 No comments Spring Boot Bootstrap Thymeleaf Rich Text Editor

Spring Boot + Bootstrap + Thymeleaf Rich Text Editor

1. Introduction

In this article, we are going to present the Thymeleaf Rich Text Editor component. This kind of editor works in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) mode, meaning the content to be edited resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product.

You can find more information about Thymeleaf and Forms in the following links:
Thymeleaf Tutorial
Working with Forms in Thymeleaf

2. Dependencies

2.1. Maven dependencies

To present Rich Text Editor, we used a sample Spring Boot application created as a Maven project using three main dependencies:

2.2. Front-End libraries
  • bootstrap - a frontend framework for creating responsive websites.
  • summernote - an awesome WYSYWIG editor for websites.

Maven pom.xml file have the following structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <artifactId>thymeleaf-bootstrap-rich-text-editor</artifactId>

    <properties>
        <bootstrap.version>4.0.0-2</bootstrap.version>
        <webjars-locator.version>0.30</webjars-locator.version>
        <lombok.version>1.18.2</lombok.version>
    </properties>

    <!-- Inherit defaults from Spring Boot -->
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.1.5.RELEASE</version>
    </parent>

    <!-- Add typical dependencies for a web application -->
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
            <artifactId>bootstrap</artifactId>
            <version>${bootstrap.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
            <artifactId>webjars-locator</artifactId>
            <version>${webjars-locator.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.projectlombok</groupId>
            <artifactId>lombok</artifactId>
            <version>${lombok.version}</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

    <!-- Package as an executable jar -->
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

3. Model, Controller, and Main Application class

Model layer contains a Post class with a title and content fields:

package com.frontbackend.thymeleaf.bootstrap.model;

import lombok.Getter;
import lombok.NoArgsConstructor;
import lombok.Setter;

@Setter
@Getter
@NoArgsConstructor
public class Post {

    private String title;
    private String content;
}
  • GET requests to the root context will return rendered index.html page,
  • POST requests will forward submitted form to the next view.

Web controller class, that handles both types of the request, have the following structure:

package com.frontbackend.thymeleaf.bootstrap.controller;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PostMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

import com.frontbackend.thymeleaf.bootstrap.model.Post;

@Controller
@RequestMapping({ "/", "/index" })
public class IndexController {

    @GetMapping
    public String main(Model model) {
        model.addAttribute("post", new Post());
        return "index";
    }

    @PostMapping
    public String save(Post post, Model model) {
        model.addAttribute("post", post);
        return "saved";
    }
}

The Application is the Java class with the main method that starts the Spring Boot application server:

package com.frontbackend.thymeleaf.bootstrap;

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);
    }
}

4. Templates

In the presentation layer contains two views:

  • index.html - this view contains form to post title and content using Rich Text Editor,
  • saved.html - this view is used to present the submitted values.

The index.html template has the following structure:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en" xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8"/>
    <title>Spring Boot Thymeleaf Application - Bootstrap Rich Text Editor</title>

    <link th:rel="stylesheet" th:href="@{/assets/summernote/summernote-bs4.css}"/>
    <link th:rel="stylesheet" th:href="@{/webjars/bootstrap/4.0.0-2/css/bootstrap.min.css} "/>
</head>
<body>

<!-- Navigation -->
<nav class="navbar navbar-expand-lg navbar-dark bg-dark static-top">
    <div class="container">
        <a class="navbar-brand" href="/">Thymeleaf - Bootstrap Rich Text Editor</a>
        <button class="navbar-toggler" type="button" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbarResponsive"
                aria-controls="navbarResponsive"
                aria-expanded="false" aria-label="Toggle navigation">
            <span class="navbar-toggler-icon"></span>
        </button>
        <div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="navbarResponsive">
            <ul class="navbar-nav ml-auto">
                <li class="nav-item active">
                    <a class="nav-link" href="#">Home
                        <span class="sr-only">(current)</span>
                    </a>
                </li>
                <li class="nav-item">
                    <a class="nav-link" href="#">About</a>
                </li>
                <li class="nav-item">
                    <a class="nav-link" href="#">Services</a>
                </li>
                <li class="nav-item">
                    <a class="nav-link" href="#">Contact</a>
                </li>
            </ul>
        </div>
    </div>
</nav>

<div class="container">

    <div class="row">
        <div class="col-md-8 mt-5">
            <form method="post" th:object="${post}">

                <div class="form-group">
                    <label for="title">Title:</label>
                    <input type="text" id="title" placeholder="Title" autocomplete="off" class="form-control"
                           th:field="*{title}"/>
                </div>

                <div class="form-group">
                    <label for="content">Content:</label>
                    <textarea type="text" rows="4" id="content" placeholder="Content" class="form-control"
                              th:field="*{content}" autocomplete="off"></textarea>
                </div>

                <button class="btn btn-primary" type="submit">Submit form</button>
            </form>
        </div>
    </div>

</div>


<script th:src="@{/webjars/jquery/jquery.min.js}"></script>
<script th:src="@{/webjars/popper.js/umd/popper.min.js}"></script>
<script th:src="@{/webjars/bootstrap/js/bootstrap.min.js}"></script>
<script th:src="@{/assets/summernote/summernote-bs4.js}"></script>

<script>
$('#content').summernote({
    height: 200
});
</script>

</body>
</html>

To create Rich Text Editor for the content field we use JavaScript library: https://github.com/summernote/summernote/.

To initialize summernote library we use the following code:

$('#content').summernote({
      height: 200
});

The saved.html template has the following structure:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en" xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8"/>
    <title>Spring Boot Thymeleaf Application - Bootstrap Rich Text Editor</title>

    <link th:rel="stylesheet" th:href="@{webjars/bootstrap/4.0.0-2/css/bootstrap.min.css} "/>
</head>
<body>

<!-- Navigation -->
<nav class="navbar navbar-expand-lg navbar-dark bg-dark static-top">
    <div class="container">
        <a class="navbar-brand" href="/">Thymeleaf - Bootstrap Rich Text Editor</a>
        <button class="navbar-toggler" type="button" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbarResponsive"
                aria-controls="navbarResponsive"
                aria-expanded="false" aria-label="Toggle navigation">
            <span class="navbar-toggler-icon"></span>
        </button>
        <div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="navbarResponsive">
            <ul class="navbar-nav ml-auto">
                <li class="nav-item active">
                    <a class="nav-link" href="#">Home
                        <span class="sr-only">(current)</span>
                    </a>
                </li>
                <li class="nav-item">
                    <a class="nav-link" href="#">About</a>
                </li>
                <li class="nav-item">
                    <a class="nav-link" href="#">Services</a>
                </li>
                <li class="nav-item">
                    <a class="nav-link" href="#">Contact</a>
                </li>
            </ul>
        </div>
    </div>
</nav>

<div class="container">
    <div class="row">
        <div class="col-sm-12 mt-5">
            <h1 th:text="${post.title}">Title</h1>
            <div th:utext="${post.content}">Content</div>

            <a th:href="@{/}" class="btn btn-primary">Go back</a>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

</body>
</html>

5. The output

The running application is available under http://locahost:8080 URL and presents the following functionality:

Thymeleaf bootstrap rich text editor

6. Conclusion

In this article, we presented Thymeleaf Rich Text Editor component. We used the summernote which in our opinion is one of the best free JS libraries for text editor components.

As usual, the code used in this article is available under our GitHub repository.

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