Struts 1.1 Released

Evil Grinn writes "The long-awaited release of Struts 1.1 has finally happened. See the release notes for all of the changes since the last Release Candidate and also since Struts 1.0.2. Many new features are available in a stable production release for the first time today. Congratulations to the entire Struts team."

Comments

Congratulations?

[KDan]

It took them long enough to decide to finally release a final version! :-P

I'm not complaining. It's great that they did - now finally all those IDE vendors are going to put real struts 1.1 support in their software. It's a very good step politically and for the general acceptation of Struts by corporations and such.

Daniel

Re:Congratulations?

[inertia187]

IDE support? For what?

1. drop the .jar files into WEB-INF/lib
2. create a WEB-ING/struts-config.xml
3. update WEB-INF/web.xml and add Struts as a servlet

Oh, but you're talking about setup wizards, right? Yeah, JBuilder 8 only supports Struts 1.0, and JBuilder 9 only supports Struts 1.1 beta release. Even then, the wizards don't get you very far. Other than allowing newbees to learn the ropes, I don't see the use in setup wizards, but that's just me.

On the other hand, when using NetBeans code synchronization, it's very helpful. It looks for methods that should be overridden, and overrides them with one dialog box, then you just write implementation, which is kick-ass. Not exactly the same thing as supporting Struts directly, but helpful none the less.

It'd be nice if there was a Netbeans module that would read the struts-config.xml and present it in a form, like the TLD module.

Re:Congratulations?

[guusbosman]

It'd be nice if there was a Netbeans module that would read the struts-config.xml and present it in a form, like the TLD module.

I think that exactly the point KDan was making: IDE support for the struts-config and validation.xml files.

I don't know about Netbeans, but there are a couple of them for Eclipse (Alpha Struts Editor, Easy Struts). The latter one already supports Struts 1.1.

Re:Congratulations?

[znaps]

IDE support is not just setup wizards - it would include things like compile time validation (e.g. 'Error in adduser.jsp: Action mapping "/addUser" does not exist' and the like)

It would also include good support for refactoring - have you ever tried to rename a function in one of your Struts applications? You need to rename jsp filenames, Action mappings, ActionForms, class files, packages...it's a bloody nightmare having to restart the server and test everything just to find what you've forgotten to change!

While I'm not sure about other IDE's, Websphere Studio Application Developer 5 has some initial Struts support (1.1 beta 2 I think), but it has a long way to go to providing the full set of features a Struts developer would like to see. It does do the GUI presentation of struts-config.xml files you'd like to see though.

Re:Congratulations?

[inertia187]

I guess I'm too much of a hard ass to expect the IDE to do so much, but you're right. Compile time validation is a Good Thing. Another would be visually displaying the /> tags. I've gone so long without a visual form editor for JSP, I feel like a king whenever I do Swing development. Supposedly JSF is supposed to address this. We shall see.

What is it ?

[IIEFreeMan]

In simple terms

Re:What is it ?

[Dibblah]

... After a whole 3 seconds of research... Struts homepage

"Welcome to Struts! The goal of this project is to provide an open source framework for building web applications."

Re:What is it ?

[Paul Bain]

Struts is a web application development framework (WADF), of which there are many. The proliferation of open source WADF's prompted Anthony Eden to begin his Wafer Project, which aims to compare

the many open source web application frameworks which are available using a common example application. This research project is designed to compare the application frameworks on a level field by specifying an example application so that the application features become irrelevent and the merits of each framework becomes the focus.

Anthony could probably use some help.

You can find many links related to Struts on Ted Husted's page, because he's the lead developer for Struts and the author of the O'Reilly thereon.

In the opinion of some of the smarter Java developers, Struts is no longer the best of the WADF's in the Java world. Some of them seem to prefer WebWork, which is now part of OpenSymphony. Debate over Struts is raging.

Check out an attempted improvement to Struts.

Re:What is it ?

[fuzzbrain]

In addition to Webwork, Maverick and Tapestry are often brought up as alternatives to Struts. Roughly, Maverick seems to be more flexible and to be especially well suited to xslt. Tapestry does what Struts does and a whole lot more; it provides a component-based framework similar to Webobjects. All of these frameworks are similar in that they try to implement MVC (Model-View-Controller) and to separate of html from code. They also all require some time to learn and understand which is why it's hard to come up with an answer as to which is best: few people have the time to look at all of them and make a considered judgement. But using any of them is much better than using nothing.

Re:What is it ?

[KDan]

Actually Ted Husted, while a lead developer of Struts, is not the author of the O'Reilly. That's Chuck Cavaness. Husted authored the Manning publications "Struts in Action".

Daniel

Re:What is it ?

[Paul Bain]

Ted Husted . . . is . . . the author of the O'Reilly [on Struts].

No, Chuck Cavaness wrote the O'Reilly book, "Programming Jakarta Struts." I apologize for the error.

Re:What is it ?

[pmz]

Struts is a web application development framework (WADF), of which there are many.

While factually correct, "many" might be an understatement. It seems everyone and their uncle/brother/dog/etc. are inventing WADFs, which get haphazardly adopted by organizations throughout the world leaving web developers feeling their resume is somehow inadeqate.

Some of them seem to prefer WebWork, which is now part of OpenSymphony. Debate over Struts is raging.

This is what is so frustrating, where the turn-over in fashionable WADFs is rampant. I would cringe upon hearing "Struts is so, like, 2001." That was only two years ago! Ugh.

Rather than adopting a "framework" that is almost certain to fall short in its capacity, why don't web developers adopt something even better: objective simplicity. Frameworks can be a constant battling ground for new employees and old employees alike, when learning and re-learning the framework becomes burdensome. Isn't good software architecture supposed to make things intuitive, even to the average software developer?

I believe the multitude of frameworks are the product of severe NIH syndrome, rather than genuine well-intentioned common sense.

Re:What is it ?

[SlipJig]

Wish I had points with which to mod you up.

However, I do have a couple of minor observations. Objective simplicity is a laudable goal, but it conflicts with the goals of flexibility, performance, and ability to meet the requirements of the subject matter (if the subject matter is complex). There are always tradeoffs to be made.

And, it could be argued that a profusion of WADF's is a good thing in that it puts a wide variety of ideas out there, which should (in theory) yield a higher chance of something good showing up.

Yours are still valid concerns though.

Re:What is it ?

[pmz]

Objective simplicity is a laudable goal, but it conflicts with the goals of flexibility, performance, and ability to meet the requirements of the subject matter (if the subject matter is complex).

With regard to performance and flexibility, simplicity can be good, given that, sometimes, simplicity is actually more difficult to attain initially than ad-hoc complexity, which the popular frameworks tend to encourage (i.e., simplicity often requires some thought and modesty, but the fruit of that effort is forever delicious).

For example, in the long-run, it is easier to maintain a hierarchy of HTML/XHTML and CGI pages or a multi-tier JavaScript/XML/JSP/Servlet/Struts/EJB/etc/etc application? In practice, honestly, which is more likely to perform well, work predictably across browsers, and withstand the tests of time? Which method can be picked up easily by new hires or relearned quickly enough to make incremental changes month-to-month practical?

For very complex content, warranting permanent staff, it seems plausible (not speaking from experience) that DocBook could make for a very good base format, and the maturing XML tools, like XSLT, could provide a fairly direct and simple means of generating web pages as needed. Hourly Perl scripts could even keep static content up-to-date without adding much complexity and removing much of the need for real-time dynamic content. Something like DocBook also means for approximately one amount of effort, a multitude of outputs are possible (HTML and PostScript, for example). While this method might not be totally practical today, due to the immaturity of XML, it does seem promising.

Either way, it seems that simple tools can be used to make a solid website, where a one-page chart is sufficient for a person to really understand how things fit together.

Re:What is it ?

[alphafoo]

Some PHP-based MVC frameworks are out there, too, with various levels of completeness/applicability:

Ambivalence [http://amb.sourceforge.net]
Phrame [http://phrame.sourceforge.net]
AloysCore [http://www.aloyscore.com/]
php.MVC [http://www.phpmvc.net/]

Re:What is it ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked with XSLT for a wireless platform in the past, writing and debugging XSL is considerably more painful than use JSP. XSL/XSLT use declarative programming techniques to defien templates. The templates are then recursively processed. There are a lot of things XSLT is poor at, which make it difficult to work with. I'm not familiar with strutscx, webworks or opensymphony, but there are some things that are easier for web designers to use. Teaching a web designer how to think declaratively isn't easy and takes time. If some one has to waste several weeks to learn the little tips and tricks of XSL, it may not be worth it. Doing tricky XSLT is possible, like using the string function to do certain things, but there are times when you want to use scripting. XSLT is still a bit poor in that area.

Re:What is it ?

[hymie3]

... After a whole 3 seconds of research... Struts homepage

And, after a whole 3 seconds of typing, the editor could have done his frickin' job and included that in the article blurb. They editorialize (often pointlessly, IMHO) everything else, why not include something, say, *useful* from time to time?

[insert conspiracy theory here regarding click-through and ad traffric revenues]

Re:What is it ?

[nbarr]

In simple terms, its a library of Java classes and JSP tags that do much of the work for you, including form validation, localization, templating, etc.

New struts...

[Anonymous Coward]

does that mean the Apples will handle better?

*runs-away-real-fast, pauses realizing nobody got the joke, hangs head in shame and walks off into oblivion*

Re:New struts...

[Havokmon]

does that mean the Apples will handle better?

*runs-away-real-fast, pauses realizing nobody got the joke, hangs head in shame and walks off into oblivion*

Yeah, that was pretty bad.. maybe something more relevant:

Does that mean their horses will handle better?

Oreilly written by someone else...

[955301]

You can find many links related to Struts on Ted Husted's page ... the author of the O'Reilly thereon.

Ted wrote Struts in Action actually.

Chuck Cavaness wrote the Oreilly book.

Jakarta has too many projects that do the same!

[krico]

A few months ago, Jakarta started to host several projects that do the same thing
(torque ojb, ant maven, etc). The same happens with strutus turbine.

I have written some applications using turbine, and like the framework. The thing is, if "now finally all those IDE vendors are going to put real struts 1.1 support in their software" they will probably not do this for tubine. Should I give up on turbine?