RAD v7.5 support for Struts
RAD v7.5 provides the following support for Struts-based Web applications:
| A Web project can be configured for Struts. This adds the Struts runtime (and dependent JARs), tag libraries, and the action servlet to the project, and creates skeleton Struts configuration and application resources files. Application Developer support for Struts 1.2 or 1.3 can be selected when setting up the project. |
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| A set of Struts Component Wizards allows you to define action form classes, action classes with action forwarding information, and JSP skeletons with the tag libraries included. |
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| The Struts Configuration Editor is provided to maintain the control information for the action servlet. |
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| The Web Diagram Editor provides a graphical design tool to edit a graphical view of the Web application from which components (action forms, actions, and JSPs) can be created using the wizards. The Web Diagram Editor provides top-down development (developing a Struts application from scratch), bottom-up development (that is, you can easily diagram an existing Struts application that you might have imported), and meet-in-the-middle development (that is, enhancing or modifying an existing diagrammed Struts application). The Web Diagram Editor is now written on top of the Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF). Improved support allows direct/in-sync manipulation of actual components/artifacts to reflect changes in the Web Diagram Editor. |
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Note: The Web Diagram in RAD v7.5, which supports the creation of various Struts components, can also be applied in the creation of Struts components when using the IBM Struts Portlet framework. Specifically, when working with a Portlet project, and the project has been enabled to use the IBM Struts Portlet framework, the same palette options of the Web Diagram are available to the Portlet project. |
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| The Enterprise Explorer view provides a hierarchical (tree-like) view of the application. This view shows the Struts artifacts (such as actions, action forms, global forwards, global exceptions, and Web pages). You can expand the artifacts to see their attributes. For example, an action can be expanded to see the Action Forms, and forwards and local exceptions associated with the selected Action. This is useful for understanding specific execution paths of your application. The Enterprise Explorer view is available in the Java EE and Web perspectives. |
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| The JSP Page Designer provides support for rendering the Struts tags, making it possible to properly view Web pages that use the Struts JSP tags. This support is customizable using RAD's Preferences settings. |
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| Validators are used to validate the Struts XML configuration file and the JSP tags used in the JSP pages. |
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