Using Struts 1.2.1 with JDeveloper 10g

Written by Duncan Mills, Oracle Corporation
July 2004

Introduction

Struts is used as the run time page flow controller for most thin client ADF based applications. JDeveloper 10g (9.0.5.2) is shipped with Apache Struts version 1.1, the current production version, in the /jakarta-struts directory.
This tip covers how to replace the default Struts 1.1 implementation with a newer version, specifically Struts 1.2.1 Beta. Note that this configuration has not been fully tested and should only be used for evaluation and testing purposes.

The 1.2.1 release of Struts can currently be downloaded from http://cvs.apache.org/dist/struts/v1.2.1/

What's new in Struts 1.2.1?

.A full list of the new features in the 1.2.1 release is published on the Struts website (http://struts.apache.org/userGuide/release-notes.html). Most of the changes are minor and will have little impact on applications that utilize ADF data Binding.

Installing Struts 1.2.1 in JDeveloper 10g

The process of installing Struts 1.2.1 is a simple directory drop in - these instructions are valid for JDeveloper 10g 9.0.5.1 and 9.0.5.2.

1. Close JDeveloper if it is running.
2. In the file system, rename the %JDEVELOPER_HOME%/jakarta-struts directory to %JDEVELOPER_HOME%/jakarta-struts_1_1. This will enable you to simply switch back to the production version of Struts when ever you need to.
3. Download the jakarta-struts-1.2.1.zip / tar and unpack it into the %JDEVELOPER_HOME% directory, preserving the internal directory structure in the process. This should create a new directory %JDEVELOPER_HOME%/jakarta-struts-1.2.1, containing contrib, lib and webapps sub directories.
4. Rename (or copy) this directory to %JDEVELOPER_HOME%/jakarta-struts.
5. Restart JDeveloper.

Once the new version of Struts has been plugged in in this way the IDE will automatically start to use that version and any Applciation that you package up for deployment will be deployed with the new version of the Struts framework.

Known Issues / Restrictions with Struts 1.2.1 and JDeveloper 10g

1. The new wildcard capabilities of Action Mappings cannot be used with ADF DataPages and DataActions. This is due to a limitation in the Struts Action Mapping cloning code which cannot handle the indexed properties used by these Action Subclasses (Oracle Tracking Bug 375994)
2. If you use the new wildcard capabilities of Action Mappings with non ADF actions, they will work, however, the diagram representation of such Actions will show the warning symbol by the Action shape because the implementation of the action is not resolved until runtime. Thus an Action definition of:

   <action path="/go*" 
           type="view.Go{1}Action" 
           parameter="Parameter to {1}">
     <forward name="success" path="/page{1}.do"/>
   </action>

   Will generate the following shape on the diagram:
   
3. Any additional issues that you discover with Struts 1.2.1 relating to it's use in JDeveloper can be reported via the OTN Forum

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