Introduction: Create Struts application

In this tutorial, you will learn to build a Struts-based Web application using a Web diagram. A Web diagram is a file that helps you visualize the flow of a Web application that is based on Faces or Strut.

This tutorial shows you how to create and test a simple Struts application contains two Web pages, an action mapping, and a form bean. The application features one Web page that takes a year, month, and date as input and manipulates the data to compute the day of the week. If the input is valid, the computed value is displayed on an output Web page; if the input is invalid, an error message is displayed on the input page.

Learning objectives

This tutorial teaches you how to create a simple Struts application, after which you will know how to:

Create a Struts project
Edit a Web diagram
Create and edit JSPs
Add application logic
Add ActionError tags to the input.jsp page
Test a Struts application

This tutorial should take approximately 60 minutes to finish. If you explore other concepts related to this tutorial, it could take longer to complete.

Skill level

Advanced

Audience

Web application developers, Web UI designers

System requirements

To complete this tutorial you must first have a runtime server configured. This tutorial will work with the following servers:

WebSphere^® 6.0
WebSphere 6.1
Apache Tomcat 5.5

Prerequisites

To complete this tutorial, you should be familiar with the following items:

Basic Web design concepts, such as sites, pages, browsers, and servers
Web page elements, such as tables, hyperlinks, forms, and images
Editing HTML code for Web pages
Workbench perspectives and views

Lessons in this tutorial

Lesson 1.1: Create a Struts project
In this lesson, you will create a dynamic Web project that is enabled for Struts.
Lesson 1.2: Create Web diagram nodes
In this lesson you will add nodes to your new project's Web diagram.
Lesson 1.3: Create a form bean
In this lesson, you will create a form bean. A form bean is a type of Java™ bean that stores HTML form data from a submitted client request or stores input data from a Struts action link that a user clicked.
Lesson 1.4: Connect Web diagram nodes
In this lesson, you will connect the nodes in your Web diagram.
Lesson 1.5: Edit a form bean
In this lesson, you will edit the form bean source file and the Java resource file so they work in this Struts application.
Lesson 1.6: Edit an action mapping
In this lesson, you will lean how to edit an action mapping. Action mapping represents an action that gets executed, and in that execution, determines the correct path that the application will take.
Lesson 1.7: Add input and output fields to a JSP
In this lesson you will add the input fields and command buttons to the input.jsp and output fields to the output.jsp.
Lesson 1.8: Display error messages
This lesson shows you how to add the display for the error messages, so that failure messages can be returned out to input.jsp.
Lesson 1.9: Test the Struts application
In this lesson, you will test your Struts application in aWebSphere or Tomcat test environment.