Jakarta Struts Developer Workshop

Course Overview

Struts is an advanced Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework for building Servlet/JSP based web applications. It is an open source framework built as part of the Jakarta project (the makers of Tomcat) that leverages the capabilities of Servlets/JSP and custom tags to make it easier to use these technologies on large or complex web systems.

Struts addresses many major issues in using vanilla Servlets/JSP to build web systems. It solves the problem of controller complexity by removing the workflow logic from the servlets, and directing workflow in an XML configuration file. Struts improves on the limited form support in JSP by adding numerous capabilities to form processing including easy validation, easy error display, and the refilling of form input on form retries from a users previous entries. It minimizes the complexity of JSP pages, by supplying a very extensive and flexible set of custom tag libraries for many of the standard operations needed in JSP pages.

This course will get you up to speed with Struts in a very short time. It includes all the important concepts, and hands on labs that will have you building working Struts applications in no time flat.

Working in a hands-on environment, under the guidance of our experienced subject matter experts, students will learn to:

• Understand the problems with vanilla servlets/JSP, and the motivation for Struts
• Understand MVC and the Struts architecture
• Understand the Struts controller, Struts views, and Struts resource bundles
• Create & configure applications using Struts
• Define views, actions, and FormBeans
• Use Struts for form processing
• Use ActionMappings
• Handle errors and debug Struts applications
• Use the Bean, Logic, and HTML Custom Tag Libraries
• Use the flow-of-control custom tags
• Use JSTL in place of the Struts Custom Tags (optional)

Course Outline

• Jakarta Struts Project
• MVC and Struts
• Review of Web applications, Servlets & JSP
• Struts Controller, and Struts Views
• Struts Resource Bundle

• Configuring Struts applications
• Defining views
• Defining actions
• Defining FormBeans
• Action Mappings

• ActionError and ActionErrors
• Adding Error handling
• ActionForm validate method
• Error Management in Action.execute()
• Setting up the Debug environment (debugging and logging)
• Handling exceptions
• Declarative Exception Handling
• Struts Validator : Email, mask, range, length, date and credit card validation

• Cookie management
• Defining and working with beans
• Working with headers
• Handling message resources
• Working with HTML forms and form beans
• Iterating over lists
• Conditionally including parts of your JSP
• Using JSTL in place of the Struts Custom Tags (optional lesson)

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