State of Struts: Where Things Are Right Now

Struts has now reached a point where it is stable and mature enough for production applications. Many sites all over the world ”both corporate internal applications and external Internet sites ”are running production applications based on Struts.

Tomcat, the de facto standard for JSP/Servlet containers, now ships with a Struts-based administration application.

A groundswell is building behind Struts that's allowing it to emerge as the predominant framework for Web-based applications.

Struts Releases

Struts can be deployed in one of several versions. Understanding which version of Struts to use can save you significant time and heartache.

Although this might change from time to time, Struts generally has three releases active at any one time. They are

• Stable Release ” This is the version of the code that can be counted on to be the most bug-free and production ready. It might lack current features, but it's generally the most stable.

• Beta Release ” This version generally contains most of the latest features in a somewhat stable configuration. It's intended to work because the authors hope people will use it to provide feedback to them. Going production on the Beta Release should be considered risky, but might be the only option if a feature you need isn't in the Stable Release yet.

• Nightly Build ” This is the version currently in use by the developers. If you want to use it, you must build it from source. You can count on at least parts of it not working.

Most production sites are built with the Stable Release, although more than a few go live on the Beta Release. As with any of the Apache Project applications, this changes as the technology continues to mature.

Other Applications That Are Available to Use with Struts

The community support behind Struts has been nothing short of amazing. A myriad of applications, tools, sample applications, and so on are now available. For a current list, you can check the Struts site, but here are some of the more notable contributions:

• The Struts Console ” James Holmes contributed this outstanding application for managing Struts applications and configuration files. It can be used as a standalone Swing application or as a plug-in with JBuilder, NetBeans, or Sun Forte.

• Adalon ” An "Internet Application Modeling Tool," according to the Synthis Web site. Adalon is a tool for performing business process design and Internet application design. Adalon can generate Struts code directly from its design.

• StrutsTestCase for jUnit ” StrutsTestCase provides a jUnit extension that can be used to test code based on Struts.

This is merely a glimpse of what's currently available! The community support behind Struts is one of its greatest strengths.