GRAILS-5051: JSP files do not refresh in the application when changed

[graemerocher]

Original Reporter: jdigweed
Environment: Linux 2.6 (Ubuntu 9.0.4) Sun JDK 1.6.0_16
Version: 1.1.1
Migrated From: http://jira.grails.org/browse/GRAILS-5051

GSP behavior (desirable)

1. grails create-app refresh
2. grails create-controller basic
3. grails run-app
4. Go to http://localhost:8080/refresh/basic/index. Get a 404.
5. Add a new file: grails-app/views/basic/index.gsp. Just put something simple in it, like html-body-hello world-/body-/html.
6. Refresh the browser. See that hello world appears.
7. Edit index.gsp to add "hello again"
8. Refresh browser. Hello again will appear.

JSP behavior (not desirable)

1. grails create-app refresh
2. grails create-controller basic
3. grails run-app
4. Go to http://localhost:8080/refresh/basic/index. Get a 404.
5. Add a new file: grails-app/views/basic/index.jsp (note the J, not a G). Just put something simple in it, like html-body-hello world-/body-/html.
6. Refresh your browser. The file will not appear.
7. Kill the run app (control-C) and re-run it (grails run-app).
8. Refresh your browser (http://localhost:8080/refresh/basic/index). Hello world now appears.
9. Edit grails-app/views/basic/index.jsp. Add AGAIN to the text.
10. Refresh your browser. Note that the again does not appear.

Now, going from GSP editing to JSP editing, this could be confusing, as a developer may reasonably be expecting that the JSP files would be treated the same way as the GSP files.

The root cause, as I understand it, is that the JSP's are copied at run-app time to WEB-INF/views and they are not updated after that even if they change. So there are two possible solutions I could think of:

• Somehow make it resolve the files in their original places under grails-app instead of looking in WEB-INF.
• Somehow monitor for new files (like how it monitors for new domain classes, for instance) and copy over the new files into WEB-INF/views as necessary. This may involve editing RunApp.groovy (and/or the scripts it uses).

I'm not sure which of those is better. I'm leaning towards #2 and going to try to come up with a patch.

[graemerocher]

aswin said:
fuck u