>> Delivering Value

Struts 2.0
Session - 3

May, 2009

Presentation By
Training & Development
Introduction

Good Evening Guys! We are

into the third day. Many of
you might be wondering about
the fact that we have not even
started thinking about Struts2

I agree we have been slow to start

with. But that is with a reason.
If you understand the concepts clearly
then the Struts2 journey would be
much easier and pleasant. Today we
will gradually start talking about
Struts2
Lets start with a recap of the first 2
days.

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
Thanks Natasha. Jumbo! Can we do a recap of
first two days?

On Day1,
HTTP, its attributes and disadvantages
Servlet, its attributes, advantages and disadvantages
JSP, its attributes, advantages and disadvantages
MVC Design Pattern,
Struts

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo

On Day2:
Filters
Dependency Injection
Annotation
Command Pattern

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Mr. Thinker

What are the attributes of HTTP is stateless and text

HTTP? based

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Mr. Thinker

How does Servlet resolve Servlet can remember

the issue with HTTP? HTTP Requests using
Http session and other
means. Servlet can also
handle numbers etc by
converting to suitable
types

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Mr. Thinker

What are the main problems Separation of Concern is non-

with Servlets? existent. HTML code is
embedded in Java making it
difficult to maintain

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
Jumbo! Does JSPs completely replace Servlets?

No Dumbo. JSPs still get converted to Servlets. So,

for each JSP we see, there will be a corresponding
servlet in the background

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Mr. Thinker

What are the advantages Problems with Servlets are

of JSPs? solved to an extent.
Changes to HTML are
easier since JSPs are
basically HTML + Java

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Mr. Thinker

What are the problems Separation of concern is

with JSPs? still a problem. Java code
is embedded in HTML
which is equally
undesirable

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Mr. Thinker
View Layer is generally
What is the View layer implemented using JSPs
generally made of?

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
What puzzle does MVC solve?

Separation of concerns. The three layers are totally

separated

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
Jumbo! Tell something about Struts?

It implements MVC Design Pattern. It is a

framework which helps reduce the development
effort

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Mr. Thinker

How do Filters help? Repetitive tasks can be

moved to a Filter. (Eg.
Session checking,
authentication etc)

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Mr. Thinker
Yes Filters can act on pre-
Can filters act on both request as well as post-
request and response? response.

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Mr. Thinker

How is dependency injection Dependency Injection is

achieved generally? achieved generally by
performing Setter Injection.

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
Lets see, whether you can say this Jumbo, What
are annotations?

Annotations are syntactic form of metadata.

Annotations are added to the Java Source Code.
Annotations are not method calls

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
Command Pattern is basis of what framework?

Command Pattern is the basic building of Struts

Framework

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Mr. Thinker

What is the problem that

Decoupling the sender of a
Command pattern attempts to
command from the receiver of
solve?
the command. The sender does
not know anything specific
about the intricacies of the
command handled by the
receiver

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Ms. Natasha

Enough guys you have taken so much

of time that I feel guilty of involving
you in the first place. Let them learn
more. I will call you back after some
time. Now, I leave the dais to Mr.
Trainer to start the session

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Enter the World of Struts

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22
Enter the World of Struts

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History of Struts
 Struts was launched by Craig Mc Clanahan in May 2000

 Version 1.0 officially launched in July 2001

 Struts 1.x is still evolving. Struts 1.3. 10 was released on Dec 2008

 In order to get away with the disadvantages / limitations of Struts 1.x, Struts
2.0 was developed

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Birth of Struts 2
 Just before Struts 2 was built, there was a movement to achieve a common
web framework for Java
 Struts Framework’s community and Webwork framework’s community
started working together and achieved what is now called Struts 2
 Web work was merged with Struts

 Web Work provides the base technology for Struts 2

 Web Work in turn is a wrapper of a framework called XWork

WEB WORK

XWORK + Struts Struts 2

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About XWork and Web Work
 Context independent and provides features such as
– XWork is a generic command framework
 Actions
 Validations
 Interceptors
 Dependency Injection mechanism
– Webwork is a wrapper around XWork
– Context dependent specific to Web Applications

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About Struts 2
 Struts 2 was built from scratch with Web Work as the base technology

 Current Release – Version 2.1.6 on Jan 2009

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
Oh! I see. That means Struts team is a Copy
Cat. They have just copied everything from a
framework called Web Work. So, they accept
their defeat. They accept that their framework
was inferior

Why are you so pessimistic and sarcastic? Struts

was so popular and had a huge developer base. So, it
was not difficult to find out the limitations of the
framework. As soon as the limitations were found, it
was so easy to come up with a solution. It was a
Win-Win for both Struts and Web Work, since Web
Work was not very popular but had a robust
technology

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Software Pre-requisites
 Struts 2 was built using Java 5.0

 Hence JDK/JRE 1.5 is required

 A webserver / servlet container that supports java 1.5 is required. (Eg.

Tomcat 5.5 or 6.0)

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What is already installed in your systems?
 MySQL Database 5.1

 Tomcat 6.0

 Java 1.5

 Net Beans IDE

 Struts 2 Libraries

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Tomcat Setup
 Open TomcatRoot\conf\tomcat-users.xml

 Add the following entry before </tomcat-users>

 <user username="admin" password="admin" roles="manager,admin"/>

 Save and Close

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Net Beans Setup
 Click on File  New Project

 Choose Java Web

 Click Next

 Enter the Project Details:

– Project Name = StrutsTraining
– Project Location, Project Folder = Select an appropriate location

 Click Next

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Net Beans Setup (Contd..)
 In the Server and Settings Dialogue, click on Add (Server)
– In Choose Server dialog, select Tomcat 6.0
– Click Next
– Select Catalina Home as the root of the tomcat
– Enter user name and password as admin
– Click Finish
– Click Next
– Click Finish (Do not select Struts 1.2.9)

 Now a new project would be created

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Starting Tomcat
 Click on Services Tab

 Expand Servers link

 Right Click on Tomcat 6.0

 Click on Start

 In few seconds you should receive a message in the log (at the bottom of
the IDE) as “INFO: Server startup in nnn ms”
 To check if the server is up, open a browser and enter http://localhost:8080

 You should receive an index page from Tomcat

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Struts Setup – Adding the Libraries
 Explode the “struts-2.0.14-all.zip” file to an appropriate location

 Right click on Libraries

 Click on Add Jar/Folder

 Choose the lib folder of the exploded Struts directory

 Keep adding the following jar files

– Commons-logging-1.0.4.jar
– Freemarker-2.3.8.jar
– Ognl-2.6.11.jar
– Struts-core-2.0.14.jar
– Xwork-2.0.7.jar

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Struts Setup – Web.xml changes
 Add the following in web.xml of the new project that you created

 This should be added under the web-app element

<filter>
<filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
<filter-
class>org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher<
/filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

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Struts Setup – Web.xml changes (Contd..)
 Save the web.xml

 Right click on the project and click “Clean and Build”

 After successful build, click on Run

 This should open a new browser and display “Hello World!”

 If so, your Struts Setup is successful

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Saying Hello to Struts2 –
The Hello World Project

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
Oh! Cool! I do not even know ABCD of struts
but I am going to do a project. That’s great.
But how!!

Don’t have high hopes. This project is basically Struts from 20000
feet. Probably the easiest thing in Struts 2. He might have taken
this route just not to dash the confidence of you Dumbo .

Jokes apart, I think it would be a great idea to kick start our Struts
mission with a simple Hello World Program in Struts 2 and that is
exactly what this silly project is all about. Let us move on.

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What is the functionality of this project?
 First Page will display a text box where you can enter your name and submit
using a submit button
 The second page will then display “Hello!! <the name you entered in the
previous page>

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
Wow! What a great project! I should be
privileged to take part in the development

Do not be sarcastic. You will truly appreciate the importance of this

project a while from now.

Let us all start the development. All of us will manually type

whatever is mentioned in the following PPTs by following the
instructions. The idea is simple. To give you a feel of Struts 2.

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Step 1 - The Hello World Page
 Right click on Web Pages and click New  JSP

 Enter the File Name as “HelloWorld”

 Click Finish

 Type the following in the HelloWorld.jsp

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 Step 1 - The Hello World Page
<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags" %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello World!!</title>
</head>
<body>
<s:form action="helloWorld" method="post">
<H3>Hello!! Enter your name:</H3>
<s:textfield name="myName" label="My Name is"
size="30"/>
<s:submit label="Submit" name="submit"/>
</s:form>
</body>
</html>

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Step 2 – The Struts XML File
 Expand Source Packages

 Right click on default package

 Click New – Other

 Choose File type as XML

 Select File Type on the right as XML Document

 Enter the file name as struts

 Click Finish

 Type the following in struts.xml

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Step 2 – The Struts XML File
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC
"-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration
2.0//EN"
"http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-2.0.dtd">
<struts>
<package name="training" extends="struts-default">
<action name="helloWorld"
class="com.aigss.training.struts.action.HelloWorldAction">
<result name="success">/HelloWorldSuccess.jsp</result>
</action>
</package>
</struts>

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Step 3 - The Hello World Action
 Right click on Source Packages

 Click on New – Java Package

 Enter Package Name as “com.aigss.training.struts.action”

 Right click on the just created package and click on New – Java Class

 Enter the class name as “HelloWorldAction”

 Type the following in HelloWorldAction.java

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Step 3 - The Hello World Action
package com.aigss.training.struts.action;
public class HelloWorldAction {
private String myName;
public String execute()
{
return "success";
}
public String getMyName()
{
return myName;
}
public void setMyName(String myName) {
this.myName = myName;
}
}

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Step 4 – The Result Page
 Right click on Web Pages and click New  JSP

 Enter the File Name as “HelloWorldSuccess”

 Click Finish

 Type the following in the HelloWorldSuccess.jsp

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 Step 4 – The Result Page
<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags" %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello World!!</title>
</head>
<body>
<H2>Hello!! <s:property value="%{myName}"/></H2>
</body>
</html>

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Step 5 – Running the Hello World Project
 Right click on the project (StrutsTraining)

 Click on Run

 This will open up a new browser and display the index page of the project

 Now change the URL as

http://localhost:8080/StrutsTraining/HelloWorld.jsp
 Enter your name and submit

 You should get a new page with the contents “Hello!! <Your Name>”

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Step 6 – Time to celebrate

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Life without Struts2
• How life would have been without Struts. Let us rewind to the end of 20th
century
 HelloWorld.jsp
– Manually code all the HTML Tags including labels for text boxes
– Make the action of the form to point to a Servlet
– On click of the submit button, submit the form which will take the
request to the servlet
 HelloWorld Servlet
– Receive the name entered in the Hello World page and store it in a string
variable
– String myName = request.getParameter(“myName”);
– Store the string in the session with a key
– Forward or redirect the request to the Result JSP

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Life without Struts2
 Hello World Success JSP
– Get the “myName” attribute from the session using <% %>
– Display the name in the JSP page

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
Sorry Jumbo if I am missing something. I am a
beginner in Struts 2. However going through the above
slide, I do not feel that Life without Struts 2 is equally
easier. What does Struts 2 provide me? How does it
make my life easier?

I know many of us would feel the same. And there is nothing wrong
in having this thought. It would be the responsibility of the trainer
to justify himself.

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Life with Struts
 Comparing the above with Struts enabled code we see the following
differences
– No request.getParameter(“”)
– No forward or redirects anywhere
– JSPs do not have bean definition, session access etc

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
I agree that there are few positives like the ones
mentioned above. But still I am not excited about it

I cannot help the trainer here. Let use see what he has to say.

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Ph.D. in Mathematics
 Let us now focus on a little bit more complex problem

 Our objective is to achieve Ph.D in mathematics

 Let us see how Struts helps towards that cause

 The thesis given for Ph.D is adding two numbers and displaying the sum.

• The screens to be developed are as shown below:

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Ph.D. in Mathematics

SCREEN 1

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Ph.D. in Mathematics

SCREEN 2

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Ph.D. in Mathematics – Solution
 Now, you should be clear on what we are expecting. So, what are you waiting
for??
 No, this time, you will do the entire coding yourself. It is not difficult at all

 Hints:
– The approach and the steps are the same as that of Hello World
Program
– So, just copy paste the contents from that program and modify
accordingly
– At the end you would have done the following:
 Create 2 JSP files one for input and the other for results
 Add a new entry in Struts.xml
 Create a new action class
 Happy Coding!!

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
This guy clearly knows how to kill time man. We are
just on Day 1 of Struts session but he has already given
us an exercise. I do not like this.

I know what you mean! But I feel it is a no-brainer. That’s why

you find it tough 

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Ph.D. in Mathematics – Solution
 I hope all of you have completed this exercise successfully. It is time to
celebrate again

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Ph.D. in Mathematics – Solution

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Ph.D – Life Without Struts2
 Let us now look back again and check how we would have done this without
Struts 2 with traditional servlet/jsp based programming
– The servlet would have become more complex because I need to get the
numbers as String from request object and then convert them back to
numbers (float)

HTTP considers everything as text

but servlet helps to overcome this
by converting them to
corresponding types. But please
note, it is not Automatic. The
type conversion in servlet needs to
be done manually .

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Ph.D – The Magic of Struts 2 – No Explicit Type
Conversion
 Did you notice this?

 We just declared the number variables as floats in the action class

 We never converted the screen parameters from string to float. It happened

automatically!!

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Consolidated Struts 2 positives – Till Now
 No request.getParameters anywhere in the application

 No type conversions anywhere

 No forward or redirects in the code

 No need to explicitly access session or request or page (i.e. various scopes)

in many scenarios

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
OK Man. I give it to him. I now slowly realize that
there is a little bit of advantage in using Struts 2. But
are these the only reasons why I should spend so much
of time learning a new framework and then start using
it? I am reluctant

Your point is well taken. I hope there are more such positives with
using Struts. Let us wait and watch

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
That’s ok. I have one more very valid concern. We did
two projects today one of them on our own. But that is
like a blind-folded journey. I did not understand the
background. This ain’t fair on his part

Yeah! Me too. I did not expect this from the

trainer

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  History of Struts

Dumbo, Your point is very  Birth and ancestors of

valid. Tomorrow you will Struts2
learn more about the internals
 Tomcat/NetBeans/Struts/Pr
of the above two projects and
oject Setup
also we will be delving more in
depth  The Hello World and Ph.D
Projects

But now, let us do a

quick recap on what
we did today.

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Session 3

You guys have a very

good night and we will
meet again in the next
session with lots of fun


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