I made a patch to retrieve Dispatcher instance from application level PicoContainer (if not found, fall back to default ChainingDispatcher). Here is a sample configuration for using FreeMarker as view: [[nanocontainer.groovy]] if (assemblyScope instanceof javax.servlet.ServletContext) { pico = new org.picocontainer.defaults.DefaultPicoContainer(parent) pico.registerComponentInstance(new org.nanocontainer.nanoweb.ChainingDispatcher(".ftl")) return pico } else if (assemblyScope instanceof javax.servlet.http.HttpSession) { return new org.picocontainer.defaults.DefaultPicoContainer(parent) } else if (assemblyScope instanceof javax.servlet.ServletRequest) { return new org.picocontainer.defaults.DefaultPicoContainer(parent) } [[web.xml]] <servlet> <servlet-name>FreeMarker</servlet-name> <servlet-class>freemarker.ext.servlet.FreemarkerServlet</servlet-class> <init-param> <param-name>TemplatePath</param-name> <param-value>/</param-value> </init-param> <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>FreeMarker</servlet-name> <url-pattern>*.ftl</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping>