Chris Evans

In order to pass variables to normal Grails views or templates the model parameter is used, which is a Map that contains all values you want to make available to the view:

<g:render template="cart/checkout" model="${[contents: contents]}"></g:render>

This won’t work for views setting variables that are used in layouts though. Nor does setting and then referencing the variable directly in the layout:

<g:set var="contents" value="${contents}"></g:set>

because the layout is processed first, including its templates, and only then is the decorated page loaded. To work around this the SiteMesh parameter tag and the pageProperty method from the default TagLib can be used.

In the page to be decorated:

<parameter name="contents" value="${contents}"></parameter>

In the layout:

${pageProperty(name: 'page.contents')}

Note the page. prefix. Using this, the parameter is embedded into the page statically and can be referenced during the layout rendering process. I haven’t found a better way to do this at the moment.