This advanced course shows JSP and servlet programmers how to build “Model-2” Web applications using the Jakarta Struts project from Apache. Students learn the Struts architecture and see how it captures a great deal of pre-existing best practice in Web application development. They build applications from scratch using the Struts 1.1 code base, advancing through actions and action mappings, form beans, and request forwarding. They use relational data at the model layer and learn to configure JDBC data sources under Struts. Throughout, the course emphasizes the great facility in Struts of using XML declarations to replace boilerplate Java coding.

The course then shifts from these controller techniques to a focus on presentation. Students learn to use various libraries of custom JSP tags: the JSP Standard Tag Library (which supersedes a number of Struts tags), Struts HTML tags for form-building and validation, and the Tiles library for robust and reusable page layouts.

Two chapters near the end of the course treat issues of effective Struts development: one focuses on “under the hood” coding techniques and one on best practices at a design level. By the end of the course, students are building complex, internationalized Web applications that validate user input, handle error conditions gracefully, and make best use and reuse of control and presentation logic through actions, form beans, validators, business and persistence JavaBeans, and Tiles.

The course software also includes an optional overlay of workspace and project files to support use of the Eclipse IDE in the classroom. (This requires that the instructor be experienced in use of Eclipse and able to walk students through basic tasks in the IDE.)

Java Training LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Use Struts actions and action mappings to take control of HTTP requests/responses.
• Manage HTML form input and output with form beans, and use these beans to simplify data handling in the controller.
• Use persistent data in a Struts application with JDBC.
• Use JSTL and Struts custom tags to build robust and reusable JSP presentation logic.
• Support multiple client locales with various internationalization techniques.
• Define validation rules for input forms, and provide clear user feedback.
• Build complex presentations using decoupled, reusable tiles, screens and layouts.

Hardware – minimal

Pentium 500 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 500 MB disk.

Hardware – recommended

Pentium 1.5 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 1 GB disk.

Operating system

Tested on Windows XP Professional. The course software should be viable on all Windows or Linux systems which support J2EE 1.4.

Software

All free downloadable tools.