Chapter 11. How the Struts Tag Libraries Work: The View from Inside

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Review of JSP Tag Libraries

• Understanding How Struts Tags Work: The <bean:page> Tag

• Comparison to the Java Standard Tag Library

• Conclusions

The Struts tag libraries are a big part of the Struts framework. They simplify development of the View components (JSP pages) and tie the Views into the rest of the framework.

As a result, you'll find yourself spending a lot of time building and debugging JSP pages filled with Struts tags. This is actually a good thing because doing so is much easier than writing and debugging regular JSP files ” especially if you have a good understanding of exactly how the tags work.

The reason for this chapter is that sometimes it helps to resolve a problem or bug if you're comfortable reading the source code for the tags. In addition, by reading a bit of the source code and understanding the ways in which Struts stores and handles data and beans in the tags, you'll come up to speed much faster on Struts as a whole.

In this chapter, you'll learn the ins and outs of how the Struts tags work. You'll start with a quick review of the development of JSP custom tags in general, take a speedy journey through one of the actual Struts tags just to be able to say you've been there, and finish by reading a comparison of how the Struts tag libraries compare to the Java standard tag libraries.

After you complete the material in this chapter, take some time to look through the source code for the Struts tags that you use. Doing so will give you a deeper understanding of how they work and help you resolve problems faster.