Struts an MVC framework

Prasad Chaturvedula

1
Introduction

 Components of a struts app

 Impact on development lifecycle
 Best Practices

2
 StrutsFramework provides the Controller
portion of the application
 Receives requests from the client, decide
what business logic function to perform, and
delegate responsibility for producing the next
phase of the user interface to an appropriate
View component

3
Background

 Components of a struts app

 The Action Servlet
 The config file
 ActionMapping
 The Action Form
 The Action Class
 Action Errors and Validation framework

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Data subsets

 Action Servlet
 A normal servlet with some processing methods
thrown in to load config files and resource files
 Reads config file and converts XML tagged
information into copncrete Java objects using Digester
 Delegates handling of a request to the Request
Processor
 Servlet Initialization parameters
configFile, configFactory, appResources

5
Road Ahead

 <!-- Standard Action Servlet Configuration -->

<servlet>
     <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
      <servlet-
class>org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet</servl
et-class>
      <init-param>
        <param-name>config</param-name>
        <param-value>/WEB-INF/struts-config.xml</param-
value>
      </init-param>
</servlet>
 <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.do</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

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Road Ahead

 Thisservlet is responsible for handing all the

request for the Struts Framework, user can map
the specific pattern of request to the ActionServlet.
<servlet-mapping> tag in the web.xml file
specifies the url pattern to be handled by the
servlet
 The above mapping maps all the requests ending
with .do to the ActionServlet. ActionServlet uses
the configuration defined in struts-config.xml file to
decide the destination of the request. Action
Mapping Definitions is used to map any action

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Why bother?

RequestProcessor
 Identify, from the incoming request URI, the substring
that will be used to select an action procedure.
 Use this substring to map to the Java class name of
the corresponding action class
 If this is the first request for a particular
<code>Action</code> class, instantiate an instance of
that class and cache it for future use.
 Only 1 instance of the Action class for all requests

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Work Flow

RequestProcessor contd
 Optionally populate the properties of an ActionForm bean
associated with this mapping.
 Call the execute method of this Action class, passing on a
reference to the mapping that was used, the relevant form-
bean (if any), and the request and the response that were
passed to the controller by the servlet container (thereby
providing access to any specialized properties of the
mapping itself as well as to the ServletContext).

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Add-Ons

 RequestProcessor Internals
 Process method called by ActionServlet
 Process calls a series of processXXX methods which perform
pre-defined preprocessing
 processActionCreate
 processActionForm
 processPopulate
 processValidate
 processActionPerform
 processException
 processForward
 processForwardConfig .

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Road Ahead

 The struts-config.xml file

Used to define and initialize resources like
ActionForms to collect input from users
ActionMappings to direct input to server-side
Actions
ActionForwards to select output pages
DataSources for DB connections
Global Forwards
Global Exceptions

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Road Ahead

 ActionMapping

<action path="/TestAction"
type=“com.wc.actions.TestAction">
name="AddressForm"
     scope="request"
     validate="true"
     input="/pages/Address.jsp">
<forward name=“success"
path="/pages/TestAction.jsp"/>
<forward name=“failure"
path="/error/Error.jsp"/>
</action>

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 An ActionMapping defines a path that is matched
against the request URI of the incoming request
and usually specifies the fully qualified class name
of an Action class
 Contains where the request is coming from
(sourcePage)
 the name fo the ActionForm containing the user
input
 The Action class which should handle this request
 The destination resource(s)

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 ActionForm
Encapsulates User input
Makes it easy to store and validate the
data for an application's input forms
The framework sets the ActionForm's
properties from the request parameters and
sends the validated form to the appropriate
Action's execute method
Forget code like
Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter
(“something”));

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 Action Class
 Has 2 methods-
 public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping
mapping, ActionForm form,
ServletRequest request,
ServletResponse response)
throws Exception;
 public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping
mapping, ActionForm form,
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse
response) throws Exception

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 Action Class Typical functionality contd..
 Validatethe current state of the user's session
(for example, checking that the user has
successfully logged on)
 Validatform data, store the appropriate error
message keys as a request attribute, and
forward control back to the input form so that
the errors can be corrected

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 Action class Typical functionality contd…
 Perform the processing required to deal with this
request
 Update the server-side objects that will be used to
create the next page of the user interface (typically
request scope or session scope beans)
 Return an appropriate ActionForward object that
identifies the presentation page to be used to
generate this response, based on the newly
updated beans.

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The Struts Framework –
Architecture

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 Exception Handling
 Define
global exception handlers to execute
when an Action class throws an Exception
 Used to group generic exceptions in an
application
 Framewor takes care of forwarding to
appropriate JSP on occurrence

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 Exception Handling contd
 <global-exceptions>

<exception key="some.key"
type="java.io.IOException"
handler="com.yourcorp.
ExceptionHandler"/>
</global-exceptions>

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 Global Forwards
 Forwards are instances of the ActionForward
class returned from an Action's execute
method
 Map logical names to specific resources
(typically JSPs), allowing you to change the
resource without changing references to it
throughout your application.
 Typical usage- Forwarding to login pages

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 Global Forwards contd
 <global-forwards

type="org.apache.struts.action.ActionFor
ward">
<forward name="logon" path="/logon.jsp"

redirect="false" />
</global-forwards>

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 Struts validation framework
A single definition of validation rules for an
application
 Validationrules are loosely coupled to the
application
 Supports Internationalization.
 Supports regular expressions

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 Struts validator framework contd…
 validator.-rules.xml- defines the rule to be applied
 Example- “required”
 <validator name="required"
classname="org.apache.struts.util.Struts
Validator"
method="validateRequired"
methodparams=“” msg="errors.required"/>

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 Struts validator framework contd…
 validaton.xml- tie the rule to the ActionForm
 <form-validation>

<formset>
<form name="checkoutForm">
<field property="firstName"
depends="required">
<arg0 key="label.firstName"/>
</field>

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 Why all this?
 Clear separation between layers resulting In clear
separation of roles and clear interface between
programmers
 View writer responsible for JSPs and ActionForms
 Model writer provides his objects as DAOs or EJBs
 Application writer concentrates on “strutting” it all
together with Action Classes and the config file
 Resulting in faster development

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 WithStruts 1.2 we have the ability to maintain
multiple config files to enable to divide a large
aplication into modules
 This
further facilitates easy co-ordination
between programmers in a large application

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 Easy to maintain- how?
 Most varying parts of an application ar defined
at 1 central place- The config file
 The names of JSPs in ActionForwards
 The exception handlers
 The global forwards
 The Action calss itself changes
 Facility of using wildcards in mappings

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 Easy to maintain- Internationalization
 All
the Message resources of an app defined
in Application.resources
 For
a new language add a locale specific
Application.resources and use it.

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 Best Practices
Designing Action Classes
 Use Business Delegate Objects or DAOs to access
databases
 Don’t validate Business rules in the Action classes-
A mail acount registration example
 Key idea- Separation between Data and
Presentation of data
 Action Classes should only do data type validation
but should leave Business rule validations to the
Business tier

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 Use DispatchAction for CRUD functions
on same set of data
 Use Javascript to modify a variable in the form to
specify operation(C or R or U or D)
<SCRIPT>function set(target)
{document.forms[0].methodToCall.value=target;}
</SCRIPT>
<html:submit onclick="set(‘insert');">SAVE
</html:submit>
<html:submit onclick="set(‘update');">
SAVE AS NEW</html:submitl>

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 Modifythe Action Mapping to indicate
dispatch variable
<action 
  path="/reg/dispatch" 
  type="app.reg.RegDispatch" 
  name="regForm" 
  scope="request" 
  validate="true" 
  parameter=“methodToCall"/>

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 Add “methodToCall” methods in the Action class
 public ActionForward insert(
    ActionMapping mapping, 
    ActionForm form, 
    HttpServletRequest request, 
    HttpServletResponse response) 
  throws IOException, ServletException { ...
 public ActionForward update(
    ActionMapping mapping, 
    ActionForm form, 
    HttpServletRequest request, 
    HttpServletResponse response) 
  throws IOException, ServletException { ...

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 Use LookupDispatchAction for script free dispatch
 In our JSP, we can refer to the buttons in the usual
way 
 <html:form action="/test">
<html:submit>
<bean:message key="button.add"/>
</html:submit>
<html:submit>
<bean:message key="button.delete"/>
</html:submit>
</html:form>

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 LookupDispatchAction would have a method
protected Map
getKeyMethodMap(ActionMapping mapping,
    ActionForm form,
    HttpServletRequest request) {
  Map map = new HashMap();
  map.put("button.add", "add");
  map.put("button.delete", "delete");
  return map;
}

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 Screens with dynamic fields

 UseString[] getProperty() and

setProperty(String[]) methods
 Use DynaActionForm

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 Safeguarding JSPs
 <web-app>
  <security-constraint>
    <web-resource-collection>
      <web-resource-name>no_access</web-
resource-name>
      <url-pattern>*.jsp</url-pattern>
    </web-resource-collection>
    <auth-constraint/>
  </security-constraint>
 </web-app>

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 ActionForms- Coarse grained or fine grained
 Fine-grained
 Too specific
 Many in number
 Ties records in database to view side

 Coarse-grained
 Immune to changes in table structure
 Better manageability

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 Use ResultObjects to return data to View

 Result object is simply a transfer object equipped

with methods designed to give the presentation
layer a helping hand
 Usually just a wrapper around some collection class
 int getSize()
 String getDescription() –
 Iterator getIterator()

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 Error Categorization

 Register the errors under the appropriate category

 errors.add("fatal", new ActionError("....")); or
errors.add("error", new ActionError("...."));
 Identify these messages and show them
consistently
 <logic:messagePresent property="error">
<html:messages property="error" id="errMsg" >
    <bean:write name="errMsg"/>
</html:messages>
</logic:messagePresent >

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