Programming Tutorials

Editing struts-config.xml in a Struts Application

By: Gokul Verma  

The mapping of the request (remember: <some-name>.do) to a specific Action and ActionForm class is done in the struts-config.xml file. This is the edited  file from "struts-blank" to suit a one-page application:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<!DOCTYPE struts-config PUBLIC
 "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 1.0//EN"
 "http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/dtds/struts-config_1_0.dtd">

<struts-config>

  <!-- ========== Form Bean Definitions ================= -->
  <form-beans>

    <form-bean      name="submitForm"
                    type="hansen.playground.SubmitForm"/>

  </form-beans>

  <!-- ========== Action Mapping Definitions ============ -->
  <action-mappings>

    <action   path="/submit"
              type="hansen.playground.SubmitAction"
              name="submitForm"
              input="/submit.jsp"
              scope="request">
    <forward name="success" path="/submit.jsp"/>          
    <forward name="failure" path="/submit.jsp"/>          
    </action>

  </action-mappings>

</struts-config>

As you can see the file contains two sections: the form-beans section, that lists the ActionForm beans, and the action-mappings.

In the form-beans section you give the bean a logical name (referred to in the action-mapping) and specify the path for the class file.

The action-mappings are the most interesting. The attributes given are these:

path - name of the request: "submit.do". You don't enter the ".do"-part here.
type - the path for the Action class file
name - is the logical name of the form bean (from the form-bean section)
input - validation errors should be shown on this page
scope - specifies how long the form bean should live. You may specify "session" instead.

The forward tag tells the servlet where to go if it receives either "success" or "failure" from the Action class. We'll return to this feature. In our simple case we always return to the same page.

It's wise to standardize on class names. I've used these simple conventions: