Fix Hot Reload of Thymeleaf-Templates In spring-boot:run

The Problem: Hot-Reload Of Thymeleaf-Templates Does Not Work, When The Application Is Run With spring-boot:run

A lot of people seem to have problems with hot reloading of static HTML-ressources when developing a Spring-Boot application that uses Thymeleaf as templateing engine with spring-boot:run. There are a lot of tips out there, how to fix that problem:

  • The official Hot-Swapping-Guide says, that you just have to add spring.thymeleaf.cache=false in your application-configuration in src/main/resources/application.properties.
  • Some say, that you have to disable caching by setting spring.template.cache=false and spring.thymeleaf.cache=false and/or run the application in debugging mode.
  • Others say, that you have to add a dependency to org.springframework:springloaded to the configuration of the spring-boot-maven-plugin.
  • There is even a bug-report on GitHub, that says, that you have to run the application from your favored IDE.

But none of that fixes worked for me. Some may work, if I would switch my IDE (I am using Netbeans), but I have not tested that, because I am not willing to switch my beloved IDE because of that issue.

The Solution: Move Your Thymeleaf-Templates Back To src/main/webapp

Fortunatly, I found a simple solution, to fix the issue without all the above stuff. You simply have to move your Thymeleaf-Templates back to where they belong (IMHO): src/main/webapp and turn of the caching. It is not necessary to run the application in debugging mode and/or from your IDE, nor is it necessary to add the dependency to springloaded or more configuration-switches.

To move the templates and disable caching, just add the following to your application configuration in src/main/application.properties:

spring.thymeleaf.prefix=/thymeleaf/
spring.thymeleaf.cache=false

Of course, you also have to move your Thymeaf-Templates from src/main/resources/templates/ to src/main/webapp/thymeleaf/. In my opinion, the templates belong there anyway, in order to have them accessible as normal static HTML(5)-files. If they are locked away in the classpath you cannot access them, which foils the approach of Thymeleaf, that you can view your templates in a browser as thy are.

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