This book is a rapid and effective Struts tutorial for Java developers. It is a step-by-step introduction to building Struts web applications. The book builds a fully-featured online bookstore application incrementally, with each stage described in detail.
Each chapter begins with a short introduction and ends with in-depth questions and a short summary. Each chapter builds up on the previous one. Those readers who are already familiar with Struts can skip individual chapters, but they should at least skim through those chapters, so they won’t lose the plot and it will also help them to keep up with the web application development part of the book.
Here is an overview for the content of the each chapter:
Chapter 1 presents an overview of Struts in compact form.
Chapter 2 explains the installation for the Struts and shows the first, very easy example. The aim is to start working and experimenting with a fully running system. If you have worked with Struts before, you can skip this chapter.
Chapter 3 introduces the concept the book is based on—the web application called the "Book Store". This will be built, expanded and adapted step-by-step in the following chapters. The underlying design will be introduced in this chapter.
Chapter 4 discusses Internationalization—the possibility to adapt the text of a web site for different languages. Here are some further information and tricks: Custom Actions are explained and a particular Custom Action will be developed.
Chapter 5 emphasizes the importance of correct logging and use of configuration data for software quality. This chapter presents different implementation approaches.
Chapter 6 discusses forms. Handling forms is a standard problem. Error handling in particular generally requires the same mechanisms. Struts offers various possibilities for simplifying this task. Furthermore, this chapter gives insight on how to access databases.
Chapter 7 introduces Logic Tags which allow us to manage conditional generation of a web page via HTML tags. Logical statements such as Loops and If statements are explained in this chapter.
Chapter 8 discusses error handling, the central element of any application. A well-designed shop will always display an error message; after all it’s about the customer’s convenience.
Chapter 9 discusses the controller and templates. The basic process for the controller in the Model 2-concept is manually implemented and subsequently explained for Struts. Templates (Tiles) allow modular design of the web site and easy alteration.
Chapter 10 is quite an extensive chapter where the elements of the shop are further expanded and merged together as one package. Authorization is implemented, a shopping cart is built and the order process completed.
Chapter 11 offers interesting additional information on Struts independent of our online shop.
Chapter 12 discusses JSTL—frequently called a successor of Struts. Here is a short overview of how these two techniques can be combined together.
Chapter 13 gives useful tools and enhancements for Struts as well as practical solutions for frequently encountered problems.
Appendix A is the Solutions section. Here you will find answers to several exercises. Do yourself a favor and look into this section only after you have solved the problem yourself!
Appendix B contains a Glossary explaining important concepts.
Appendix C contains Literature where you will find some more book tips.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
New terms and important words are introduced in a bold-type font. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in our text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
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