In this session we focused on how to use the Jakarta Struts project in your application development. Struts is an open source framework useful in building web applications with Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology. Based on the Model-View-Controller pattern, the framework brings a significant advantage to your application development -- which explains the rapid growth in popularity of the Struts project.

We learned not only about what the various Struts components are, but also how to use them by walking through a sample J2EE application. We explored how to setup and configure the struts-config.xml file, build Action classes, dispatch requests to appropriate Action classes, use the available JSP custom tag libraries to build interactive form-based applications, as well as how to use the various utility classes to support XML parsing, automatic population of JavaBeans properties based on the Java reflection APIs, and internationalization of prompts and messages.

Sue Spielman