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Can I have an Action without a form?

Struts Questions and Answers


(Continued from previous question...)

58. Can I have an Action without a form?

Yes. If your Action does not need any data and it does 
not need to make any data available to the view or
controller component that it forwards to, it doesn't need 
a form. A good example of an Action with no ActionForm is 
the LogoffAction in the struts example application:

    <action path="/logoff"
 type="org.apache.struts.webapp.example.LogoffAction">
      <forward name="success" path="/index.jsp"/>
    </action>

This action needs no data other than the user's session, which 
it can get from the Request, and it doesn't need to prepare any
view elements for display, so it does not need a form.

However, you cannot use the <html:form> tag without
an ActionForm. Even if you want to use the <html:form> 
tag with a simple Action that does not require input, 
the tag will expect you to use some type of ActionForm, 
even if it is an empty subclass without any properties.

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