In this tutorial we will see how to create a simpe Struts 2 Hello World Application. The following files are needed to create a Hello World Application. ... more »

We will learn annotations in struts 2 using the hello user example. In this example we will get the user name and display a welcome message to the user. There are two versions of this example, in the first one we will see how to do this by using the intelligent defaults provided by the struts 2 framework. We will not do any configuration in this example except the deployment descriptor. The example is created using ecilpse. The war file of this example is also provided at the end of this tutorial so that you can try it yourself. So lets start, you need to have the following jar files in the WEB-INF/lib directory.... more »

A framework tries to automate the common tasks and provides a platform for the users to build applications quickly. Struts 2 is based on the OpenSymphony Web Works Framework. Struts 2 framework implements the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern.... more »

In the past, I posted an example on how to use Displaytag with Struts and Spring, using Spring JDBC for data access(1, 2). In this post, I will describe how to do the same using Struts 2.0. The only major step that needs to be done here is to override the default Struts 2.0 OjbectFactory. Changing the ObjectFactory to Spring give control to Spring framework to instantiate action instances etc. Most of the code is from the previous post, but I will list only the additional changes here.... more »

I am currently evaluating some web frameworks for a pet project and was trying to implement Struts 2 with tiles. Neither the Sturts 2 website, nor the tiles website gave an easy way to integrated Struts 2 and tiles. It took me a while to get them to work together. This post describes a way I figured out how to integrate Struts 2 with tiles. Struts 2 provides a plugin for integrating tiles 2. This plugin is included in the complete bundle (struts-2.x.x.x-all.zip). The following are are the steps needed to integrate struts2 with tiles.... more »

In a previous post, I described how to use validations in Struts 2, using XML validation rules. This post will show how to use Annotation based validation in Struts 2. For this example I used the add transaction part of google's portfolio manager (noticed that they do not have validations over there). Struts 2 provides a number of validators for XML based validation rules. All of them have respective annotations defined and can be used in place of XML validation rules. In the example, we will use the @RequiredStringValidator, @RegexFieldValidator and also see how to parameterize messages when using annotations.... more »

Struts 2 allows the use of Custom validators through the @CustomValidator annotation. The @CustomValidator annotation takes two mandatory parameters, type and message... more »

Recently I got an opportunity to explore Spring Web FlowExternal Link framework. Later I came to know that Shale DialogExternal Link also solves the same problem. JBoss Seam too solves the same problem.... more »

Looking for a new Web development framework? Walk through a sample application to see if Struts 2.0 is right for you.... more »

Find out what's changed in Struts 2.0 and decide whether it's time to migrate to the new, improved Struts framework.... more »