If you're bound to using the Struts dispatcher, it's fairly painful to
integrate any other tools. Basically, Struts has one and only one way
of modularizing views - a RequestDispatcher.forward().
I suppose this does make it possible to use Maverick views, but it's
ugly: You can forward to maverick commands. This would require
maintaining both config files, although the maverick one would be very
simple, defining no controllers and only one view per command.
Using Domify and XSLT would be a little tricky - you would have to write
your own ViewFactory. The normal DomifyView expects to get the model
from the controller, but you need to obtain the model from the request
attributes (where Struts places it).
So basically, it can be done, but it will be a hassle.
Of course, if you're working on the 1.1 JDK, maybe this isn't the
biggest obstacle you've had to overcome :-)
Jeff Schnitzer
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-Original Message-
From: Ed Ward [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 8:32 AM
To: Jeff Schnitzer; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Mav-user] Maverick to Struts
I suppose I should have been more explicit in my previous email, which
was
posted in part to help me let off some steam. :-o
I'm aiming at reusing the View mechanism and the controllers (with a
few
modifications to overcome the singleton nature of Struts). The general
idea
is to have the Struts actions forwarding to Maverick style views to
provide
the transforms etc.
I've been working on an implementation that works with a servlet 2.1
API
and
jdk1.1.x (It's currently running in VisualAge 3.02 (urghh)). I'm using
the
TrivialView and Transforms along with a DispatchedView. The
configuration
is
hard-coded rather than driven from a configuration file. I've ported
the
Jakarta Commons packages to the 1.1.x platform. The eventual platform
will
be WebSphere 4.0, so there'll be a few changes when that happens.
One good thing from my point of view though, is that although the use
Struts
has been mandated on this project, its use is mainly as a dispatch
mechanism. Use of the Struts tag libraries has been discouraged, so a
Maverick style view mechanism will be really cool and will hopefully
be
good
publicity for Maverick on other projects which will hopefully be able
to
make use of the view mechanism.
Ed.
- Original Message -
From: Jeff Schnitzer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Ed Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 1:36 AM
Subject: RE: [Mav-user] Maverick to Struts
The question is, which part?
I can identify three discrete pieces of an MVC framework which could
conceivably be mixed and matched:
1) The controller/action part, including bean population, form
validation, etc.
2) The view part, including jsp taglibs and (for Maverick)
transformation, etc.
3) The core, which basically covers everything else. In
particular, it
includes the Dispatcher/ActionServlet, the configuration file, and
how
the components are put together.
Which parts of Maverick do you want to work with which parts of
Struts?
A lot of interoperability with Struts is possible if you use the
Maverick core. It is even possible (although I haven't tried it
yet) to
use Struts Actions and Struts views (with their own JSP taglibs),
getting transforms, shunting, and the flexible config file from
Maverick. This would require building fairly simple implementations
of
the ControllerSingleton base class and ViewFactory.
Struts however is not very modular, so if you need to use the Struts
core (including their ActionServlet), I don't know what you can do.
You're going to have a rough time with XSLT, too, because it'll be
very
difficult to get more than a single transform configured.
Jeff Schnitzer
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-Original Message-
From: Ed Ward
Sent: Sat 4/20/2002 9:31 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc:
Subject: [Mav-user] Maverick to Struts
Hi,
Hold on to your hats whilst I ask what might sound a really dumb
question.
How easy is it to wrap a Maverick application with Struts?
The reason I ask... The client I'm working for recently made an
announcement
that all their future webapps will be developed with Struts :-((
I did what
I could to make them see the error of their ways, but AFAIK they
haven't
even taken a brief look at Maverick and the lead architect
hadn't even put a
working Struts app together when the decision was communicated!
I don't have
much knowledge of Struts myself, hence the question.
Suffice it to say I'd still like to rework our UI using Maverick
and XSLT,
but now I have to consider the implications of my client's
Struts
requirements.
The presentation layer of the app I'm working on requires
extensive rework
to enable it to use either Maverick or Struts, but I've already
started
rewriting with Maverick
