Using JSP Tag Libraries

Using the Struts Open -Source Framework

All this discussion of MVC, JSPs, and custom tag libraries would not be complete without at least mentioning one of the most popular open-source MVC frameworks going. Struts is an open-source framework that can be used to build Web applications with Java servlets and JSP pages. It is available for free download at

http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/index.html

The Struts architecture is based on the MVC design paradigm discussed earlier. The Jakarta Project has recently released the 1.0 version of the framework.

The framework includes several custom tag libraries for handling such things as locale resource bundles used for multiple language support, logic tags for doing such things as iterating through a collection and building an HTML table from it, and many other common needs. The framework also handles such things as input validation and language-specific error handling.

Because Struts is open source, you are free to modify it to fit your needs. The nice thing about starting with the framework is that you are not starting from scratch. If you are going to be building a JSP/servlet architecture in your presentation tier , more than likely you are going to need several of the components that are already provided by the Struts framework. There's no sense in reinventing the wheel in this case.