Struts Questions and Answers

Part:   1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20   21  22  23  24  25 

65. Dynamic pages using struts
Is it possible to create the elements of a page(jsp) dynamically based on the results of a data base query, when using struts framework?

If you are talking about rendering a report, then sure. The Action iteracts with the business layer/data access objects to acquire the data, and then passes it to the presentation page bundled up as a JavaBean or a collection of JavaBeans. The JSP tags (and other systems) all use reflection, so you can use whatever JavaBean you like.
If you are talking about creating a dynamic data-entry form, then "not so much".
Struts 1.1 supports map-backed ActionForms, but the page still needs to know what input fields are going to be needed. For a truly dynamic input form, I guess the key would be some type of tag that took a map and then generated a column of input fields. (Wouldn't work for everyone, since a lot of forms must be designed just so.) For extra credit, the entry names could (optionally) be resource keys that were used to find the label text.
Text fields would be easy. Others would need some type of JavaBean with properties to tell the tag what to output. A bit of work, but obviously doable.
Of course, you'd probably want to validate the form before passing it back to the database. I imagine it's possible to use the validator in a non-declarative way, but I don't know anyone whose doing that. If you can do a db query to get the information about the form, I imagine you could also do a query to get the information about validations for the form. It would probably be easier to write your own engine than adopt the validator. (It's not really that complicated to do.)
People often ask about "dynamic input forms", but most of us just can't get our head around the use case. It's hard to understand what you do with the dynamic data when it comes back. Most application don't allow you to input or update an arbitrary (e.g. dynamic) set of fields.

66. What's the best way to deal with migrating a large application from Struts to JSF? Is there any tool support that can help?

Answer: This is a complicated task depending on your Struts application. Because the two frameworks have different goals, there are some challenges. Migrate your response pages first. Keep the Struts controller and place and forward to JSF pages. Then you can configure Struts forwards to go through the Faces servlet. Consider looking at the Struts-Faces framework from Apache. See the framework chapter in JSF in Action.

67. Declarative Exception Handling

If you have developed web applications long enough, you will realize a recurring pattern emerges: when the backend (e.g. the EJB tier) throws you an exception, you nearly always need to display an error page corresponding to the type of that exception. Sooner or later, you will come up with a mechanism to use a lookup table (e.g. an HashMap) to lookup an error page from the exception class.
Struts 1.1 now provides a similar but more powerful mechanism to declare exception handling. In Struts 1.1, you can declare in the struts-config.xml the associations between an exception class and an exception handler. Using the default exception handler included in Struts, you can also specify the path of the error pages. With this information, Struts will automatically forward to the specified pages when an uncaught exception is thrown from an Action.
Like other facilities in Struts, the exception handlers are pluggable. You can write and define your own handler classes if needed.

Part:   1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20   21  22  23  24  25