The Barnes & Noble Review
Nowadays, it seems like every Java developer’s using JSPs -- and every JSP developer is interested in frameworks, the fastest way to deliver the best JSP software. The “king” of JSP frameworks is Struts, from the Apache Jakarta project. And we’ve seen no better resource for learning Struts than Struts Kick Start.
James Turner and Kevin Bedell begin with an exceptionally lucid high-level overview of Struts’ goals, elements, and the MVC design pattern that underlies it. Then, via an extremely simple application, they introduce each essential Struts function and explain how Struts interacts with JSP code, servlets, and the new JSTL tag libraries.
With a simple application under your belt, Turner and Bedell move on to a more sophisticated financial application, starting with a functional requirements spec. This five-chapter case study covers everything from wireframing and use cases to modeling. There’s also a full chapter on the crucial struts-config.xml file, which ties together all the elements of a Struts application.
In the following section, the authors take you under the hood with one sample Struts tag and then introduce each Struts tag library, with sample code. That includes up-to-the-moment coverage of Tiles, Validator, and other new Struts 1.1 enhancements. The authors close with best practices for integrating Struts with both Enterprise JavaBeans and web services, as well as testing and deployment with Jakarta Ant and Cactus. All the book’s code is on CD-ROM, along with the latest versions of everything from Tomcat to JBoss. Bill Camarda
Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks For Dummies®, Second Edition.
My ever-persuasive editors at Sams have convinced me to do another Kick Start book, this time covering JavaServer Faces. We expect to start writing in the spring for a fall release date.
I've been lucky enough to enlist Craig McClanahan, the spec lead on JSF, to write the forward for the book and provide whatever advice he can fit into his busy schedule.
After a lot of effort by the Struts team, the 1.1b3 release has been let loose upon an unsuspecting public. A ton of bug fixes are incorporated into the release, as well as a few new features that snuck in.
You can download the source and binary distributions of the release at http://www.apache.org/dist/jakarta/struts/
Now, on to the general release!
In reference to html:link (the description of which begins on page 203 of Struts Kick Start), a new parameter has been added.
Instead of using <html:link page="/myapp/foo.do">, you can instead use <html:link action="/myapp/foo">, which has the advantage of hidding the actual implementation of action mapping inside the struts-config file, where it belongs.