Viewing a Struts project's structure

This documentation describes how to use Struts Explorer to view the structure of a dynamic Web project that has the Struts feature enabled.

To view the structure of a Struts project, complete the following steps:

  1. In the Web perspective, click Window > Show View > Struts Explorer. The Struts Explorer view lists the names of the dynamic Web projects that exist in your workspace.

  2. In the Struts Explorer, you can click the + signs to expand the list into a tree that lists the Web pages that are contained in a project. If the project is a Struts Web application, you can also get a list of Struts resources that are associated with the project.

  3. You can expand each Web page to see the links that the page contains.

  4. You can follow a link to the next page or action to see how the Web application flows from the initial page.

  5. You can also take the following actions to view a project's structure:

    • If you select a JSP file, you can expand the tree to see a list of links that are contained in that file. If you select and expand an action mapping, you can see the form bean that is associated with this mapping, as well as its local forwards and its local exceptions. You can also see the input, forward, and include attributes if they are defined for that mapping, because these are possible execution paths for that action mapping.

    • If you select and expand a form bean, you can see the fields that are defined by the form bean. If you select and expand a forward, you can see what the forward forwards to. In a Struts 1.1 project, if you select and expand an exception that has its attribute path defined, you can open the target of the path attribute.

    • Additionally, in a Struts module, you may see a module transition node. This denotes a transition of the originating module to the next module that can happen if this link, action, or forward is executed.

 

Related concepts

Struts and model-view-controller design pattern
The Data Mappings view
The Struts Explorer view

 

Related tasks

Creating a dynamic Web project
Adding Struts support to dynamic Web projects
Editing other Struts-relevant resources
Viewing Web page forms' data mappings

Related reference
Icons used by the Struts Explorer view

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