Web programming Units WEB1P and WEB2P

Introduction to Struts

Introduction

Struts is an application framework that supports the MVC/Model 2 approach. It is an Apache project whose homepage is http://struts.apache.org/. Download the latest version here.

Struts is a good way of implementing the Controller component and also provides a set of tag libraries that allow good integration of the View component with the Controller. Struts anticipates that your Model will be implemented as a set of JavaBeans. Struts also provides a number of other useful features that we won't go into in detail, including:

• input validation (in conjunction with the Jakarta Commons Validator)
• internationalisation (allowing an application to produce pages in multiple languages)
• role-based security

There are now two versions of Struts: 1 and 2. Struts 1 is the original version - much used and much documented in several textbooks. However, experience of Struts users led to the development of a more flexible and powerful version - Struts 2 (originally known as WebWork 2) - in 2007.

Struts 1

Struts 2