How This Book Is Organized

This book is organized in a specific way to help you get the most out of it.

Chapters 1 through 5 of the book gives a high-level overview of Struts and introduces the Model-View-Controller design pattern behind Struts. The specifics of how Struts implements this design pattern are discussed with the goal of helping you understand how to better understand, design, and build Struts applications. A first Struts application is presented that covers each major function of Struts with an eye toward providing you a good base knowledge of how it works. You'll review JSP, Java servlets, and JSP tag libraries, and learn how they interact with Struts.

Chapters 6 through 10 are built around a sample financial application. This is introduced using a functional requirements specification that is followed by the specific implementation details behind the Model, View, and Controller components . Details of the struts-config.xml file are also covered. This sample application is designed to demonstrate each of the main pieces of the Struts framework.

Chapter 11 provides you with insight into how the Struts tag libraries are built by climbing inside and explaining a real sample tag from the inside out. Following that, Chapters 12 “16 provide details on and sample code for all the Struts tag libraries, including Struts 1.1's new Tiles tags.

Chapter 17 provides a solid grounding on two important Struts technologies: DynaForm s and the Validator. These technologies allow nearly codeless development of Web forms.

The book finishes with some advanced topics. Chapter 18 provides a set of best practices and a practical design pattern for integrating Struts with Enterprise JavaBeans, including a working sample application based on JBoss. Chapter 19 takes a similar look at integrating Struts with Web Services, including a detailed sample application using Apache Axis. Finally, Chapter 20 looks at building, deploying, and testing using Jakarta Ant and the Jakarta Cactus testing framework.