>> Delivering Value

Struts 2.0
Session - 10

June, 2009

Presentation By
Training & Development
Introduction

Good Evening everybody!

Welcome to the Day 10 of the
Struts 2 training course

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Introduction
 Day 1 – History of Web applications

It will be another  Day 2 – Concepts to be known before

exciting day of learning. learning Struts 2
Let us now do a quick  Day 3 – Struts 2 environment setup, Hello
recap on what we have World Project, PhD Project
learned so far:
 Day 4 – Dissection of Hello World, Value
Stack, OGNL
 Day 5 – Action Interface, Action Support
class, Validation, Resource Bundle and
Internationalization
 Day 6 – Validation Framework provided by
Struts 2
 Day 7 – Writing your own interceptors
 Day 8 – Action Context, accessing Session
and SessionAware interface
 Day 9 – Preparable and ModelDriven
Interfaces

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Ms. Natasha

Let us now let Thinker, Dumbo

and Jumbo refresh your memory by
providing reviews of important
points over the past week

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
if there is a validation error in the XML then will the
validate method of action class be executed?

Yes, it will be executed because it

is always better to display the
errors at one go to the user

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Mr. Thinker

What should be the name of the <action class>-

validation xml if I have just validation.xml
one business method inside the
action class?

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Mr. Thinker

What should be the name of the

validation xml if I have more than one
business method inside the action class <action class>-<action
and I want various validations for name>-validation.xml
various business methods?

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Mr. Thinker

What is the validator type to be

used for complex validations?

Expression

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
When is the error message displayed for a validator
type of expression?

If the expression mentioned

inside param returns false

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Mr. Thinker

If your validation is not inside the

field element, where is the error
message displayed in the page?
The error message is
displayed as action error
under the page scope

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
What is the parameter for intercept method?

ActionInvocation

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
In the intercept method what should you do not
break the chain of invocations?

You should call the method

actionInvocation.invoke( )

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
What is the name of the parameter which is used to
specify the name of the methods for which the
interceptors should not be invoked?

excludeMethods

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Mr. Thinker

What is the name of the includeMethods

parameter which is used to
specify the name of the
methods for which the
interceptors should be
invoked?

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Mr. Thinker

How do you pass parameters

Using the param
to an interceptor?
element

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Mr. Thinker

How can I pass different

values for the same parameter Use param
in different actions? name=”interceptor.para
mname” instead of just
parameter rname

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Mr. Thinker

How many methods does the

One
Preparable Interface provide?

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
What is the signature of the method?

void prepare( )

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
Which interceptor in turn uses this method

PrepareInterceptor

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
The defaultStack already includes the
PrepareInterceptor. True or false?

True

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
What kind of logic will you include in the prepare
method?

We will include preparatory logic in this

method (Eg. Preparing the model object by
getting the fields values from the session/DB
and setting in the model object etc)

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Mr. Thinker

What is the name of the Model

interface used to create a Driven
Model Object in the value
stack?

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Mr. Thinker

What is the method exposed

Object
by this interface?
getModel( )

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Mr. Thinker

What is the name of the

ModelDriven
interceptor that uses this
Interceptor
interface?

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Mr. Thinker

The defaultStack does not

include ModelDrivenInterceptor. False. The
True or false? defaultStack includes
this interceptor

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
What is the advantage of having the Model Object?

You can directly start referring from inside

the model object so the ognl will be less
complex. The other thing is that it is stored
similar to the action object (separately) in the
value stack

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Dumbo Vs. Jumbo
How many model objects will be present in the
Value Stack at any point of time?

Only one, since there can be only one action

object at any time. One action object can
contain only one model object

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Ms. Natasha
Let us now learn today’s topic
Today we will be learning about the
various UI tags

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 Type of UI Tags
 Data Tags

 Control Tags

 Component Tags

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 Data Tags – s:property
 S:property provides an easy way of writing a property into the rendering
HTML
<s:property value="user.username"/>

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 Data Tags – s:set
 The set tag is used to assign a value to a property

 In simple programming language terms it is similar to assigning a value to a

variable
 In Struts terms the simplest reason to use this tag is for convenience

 You can assign a complex OGNL to a variable with simple name, then keep
referring this simple name instead of the complex OGNL

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 Data Tags – s:set - usage
<s:set name="myName" value="user.username"/>
Hello, <s:property value="#myName"/>. How are you?

 In the above case, an object with name myName is created in the default scope
which is Action Context
 If you want to change the scope, here is an example
<s:set name="myName" scope=”application”
value="user.username"/>
Hello, <s:property value="#application[‘myName’]"/>. How
are you?

 Please note that the above is also an example of retrieving data from within action
context’s various types of objects like application, session etc.
 For example, if you had an attribute called USER_NAME in session which stores
the user’s name, you can retrieve it as
 <s:property value="#session[‘USER_NAME’]"/>

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 Data Tags – s:push
 While the set tag is used to create new references to existing values, push tag
allows you to push properties on to the value stack
 This is useful when you want to do a lot of work revolving around a single
object
 For example if you keep using user object, then instead of referring it every
time with a complex OGNL, you can push the user object so that it becomes a
top level object. Then referring it would be much simpler

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 Data Tags – s:push – usage
<s:push value="user">
This is the "<s:property value="portfolioName"/>"
portfolio,
created by none other than <s:property
value="username"/>
</s:push>

 In the above example, the push tag pushes the user object onto top of the value
stack
 The end of the push tag removes the user object from the top of value stack.

 Between these two tags you can refer the attributes inside user object directly

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 Control Tags – s:iterator
 Widely used

 You use iterator tag to loop over collections of objects easily

 It can be used to loop over Collection, Map, Enumeration, Iterator or array

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 Control Tags – s:iterator - usage
<s:iterator value="users" status="stat">
<li>
<s:property value="#stat.index" />
<s:property value="userName"/>
<s:property value="firstName"/>
<s:property value="lastName"/>
<s:property value="age"/>
</li> </s:iterator>

 In the above example, the action object exposes a collection of users. The iterator tag
iterates over this set of users
 During the body of the tag, the corresponding user is placed on top of the value
stack so that you can refer to the attributes of that particular user object
 Please note that there is another object with key stat.This is a convenience object
provided by the framework to get various values

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 Control Tags – s:iterator – IteratorStatus Object
 The IteratorStatus object contains the following
– getCount – count of the iterator
– getIndex – the current index
– isEven – whether the current row is even
– isOdd – whether the current row is odd
– isFirst – whether the current row is first
– isLast – whether the current row is Last

 You can use these methods just like any other getter methods

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 Control Tags – s:if, s:elseif, s:else
<s:if test="user.age > 35">This user is too old.</s:if>
<s:elseif test="user.age < 35">This user is too
young</s:elseif>
<s:else>This user is just right</s:else>

 The test attribute of this tag is the attribute that provides the actual condition

 You can just have s:if or all the three or just s:if and s:else

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 Control Tags – s:text
 This is used for i18n

 The usage is pretty simple

<s:text name="hello"></s:text>

 Correspondingly there should be an entry in the resource bundle with key as hello

 The corresponding value will be rendered in the HTML

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Exercise
 Create 5 users in the action class. You can hard code them

 In the JSP, display these 5 users following data in a tabular form

– S.No
– First Name
– Last Name
– Age
– Occupation

 Take these headings from a resource bundle instead of hard coding them

 If there are no elements in the user collection, then display a

corresponding error message

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 UI Component Tags
 Text field
<s:textfield required="true" name="person.myName"
label="My Name is" size="30"/>

 Password
<s:password required="true" name="password"
label="password" />

 Checkbox
<s:checkbox name="receiveJunkMail" fieldValue="true"
label="Check to receive junk mail” />

 Select Box
<s:select name="user.name" list="{'Mike','Payal','Silas'}"
/>

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 UI Component Tags (Contd.)
 The above is translated into
<select name="user.name" id="ViewPortfolio_user_name">
<option value="Mike">Mike</option>
<option value="Payal">Payal</option>
<option value="Silas">Silas</option>
</select>

 Select Box – Dynamic data in drop down

<s:select name="username" list='users' listKey="username"
listValue="username" label="Select an artist" />

 Hidden
<s:hidden name="username" value=”user.name” />

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How things happen internally

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Exercise
• You need to create an application for User Account Creation of a
neighborhood pizza store. The following are the details
• Basic Details
• User name
• Password
• First Name
• Last Name
• Gender (Drop down with M and F being the codes)
• Age
• Address Details
• Address1, Address 2, city, Zip
• Miscellaneous
• Agree to terms? – checkbox
• Inform about offers? – checkbox
• On click of submit, provide a success message
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Session 10

We hope you thoroughly enjoyed today’s

session. Have a good evening and we
will meet you in the next session

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Session 10

Thank You !!

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