Follow up on the struts2 migration stuff ...
I've spent a little more time this week working on migrating the couple
of actions which I am planning to upgrade for my new 4.0 feature work,
which include the theme and template editing pages. I've also redone
the way the tabbed menu works so that it's no longer a custom jsp tag
and instead is just a normal tiles jsp.
At this point I am strongly considering just doing the whole migration
for 4.0 and getting it out of the way. Basically, I think that running
struts1 and struts2 side by side is only going to complicate things and
make them more difficult and while it's extra work to get this done I
think it's worth it. The new struts2 actions are looking *soooo* much
nicer than the old ones and I think this will really enable us to really
treat the 4.x series as a chance to refine our UI and we just can't (and
don't want to) do that with struts1.
Anyone have any strong opinions on this? I had doddling around so I
think I am just going to commit to this and find a way to make it
happen. Anyone else still want to help?
-- Allen
Allen Gilliland wrote:
> I just did my commit which contains the initial struts2 migration code
> if anyone wants to look at it or play around with it. I left all of
the
> old struts1 stuff in place and functioning, so nothing actually points
> to the struts2 actions. to get to them you'll have to hit the urls
> manually ...
>
> /roller-ui/register.rol
> /roller-ui/menu.rol
>
> those should be all you need. you can register an account with the new
> register form and then go to the new menu page and it will link to the
> other struts2 actions which are available.
>
> here's some highlights of the new struts2 code ...
>
> * features a new struts2 and tiles2 configs, struts.xml and
> tiles.xml. both of these files are static and don't use xdoclet to get
> generated at build time.
>
> * actions are now much cleaner and decoupled from the servlet spec so
> they are easier to test and reuse.
>
> * i defined a base action class (UIAction) which provides a number of
> reusable methods, basically things that used to be in BasePageModel,
> RollerSession, or RollerRequest. our new actions only need to extend
> that class and they get a *lot* of good stuff with basically no effort.
>
> * i defined a couple of custom struts2 interceptors to make our lives
> much easier. the first extracts highly reusable complex attributes
from
> the request and sets them on the applied action, things like access to
> the authenticated user object and the weblog being worked on. the
other
> interceptor provides a simple way for security enforcement to be
outside
> of the action methods, so that we don't have to constantly be checking
> if(user.hasPermission(weblog, perm)) all over the place. there are a
> few methods which you can define in your action which can tail the
> security settings for whatever your action needs, like enforcing
certain
> weblog permissions or user roles.
>
> * the jsps are much cleaner now and are using all struts2 tags. i've
> tried to eliminate as much scriptlet and other ugly stuff as possible,
> but theres still a few places that need to be cleaned up.
>
>
> overall i'm quite happy with the way things have turned out and think
> that once we get more of the actions migrated to struts2 we'll find we
> have a lot more options with cool things we can do on the UI and the
> code will be much nicer and easier to maintain.
>
> feel free to check it out and offer any comments you might have. the
> code is basically in these spots in the current trunk ...
>
> src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/struts2/
> src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/util/struts2/
> web/WEB-INF/jsps/core/struts2/
> web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/
>
> -- Allen
>
>
> Allen Gilliland wrote:
>> Well, my real need for starting this migration is because I am doing
>> some work that will modify a couple existing actions and add some new
>> ones and I didn't want to keep doing more work in Struts1 since we are
>> planning to EOL it from Roller, so it is my overall goal to get the
>> migration far enough that I can get that work done.
>>
>> As far as getting the initial part of the migration done as a proof of
>> concept, my goal is to migrate the "core" actions, which includes 5
>> actions for login, registration, profile update, weblog creation, and
>> the main menu. So far I have 4 of them done and I'm planning to
>> finish off the last one this morning and have all that ready for
>> commit today.
>>
>> That should lay the ground work but still leave a bunch of actions to
>> migrate, including the System Admin pages (5), Planet Admin pages (3),
>> and the Authoring pages (27). The authoring pages can be broken up
>> into smaller chunks of course.
>>
>> I don't have any real preference for what order we migrate things in,
>> I suppose my approach would just be to migrate the most useful stuff
>> first or the things that could benefit from Struts2 the most. But
>> anything that folks want to migrate is cool with me.
>>
>> -- Allen
>>
>>
>> Don Brown wrote:
>>> I'll be doing a BOF on migrating from Struts 1 to Struts 2 at
JavaOne,
>>> so I'd be keen to help out. Any particular set of modules you are
>>> thinking of migrating first? I'd like to help where I can.
>>>
>>> Don
>>>
>>> On 4/17/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>> Cool, the more the merrier. I'll be sure to fire off any questions
>>>> that
>>>> I have since I know they'll come up.
>>>>
>>>> The 2 actions I've migrated so far are pretty simple, so there
wasn't a
>>>> whole lot that I had to work through for them. Once I start getting
>>>> into some of the more complicated actions I'm sure there will be
more
>>>> interesting decisions to make.
>>>>
>>>> Right now I am thinking of some ways to streamline the process for
>>>> accessing data and doing operations which are basically required for
>>>> all
>>>> actions. For example, in pretty much every action we have a test
like
>>>> this ...
>>>>
>>>> if(rollerSession.isAuthorizedToXXX(user, perms)) {
>>>> // do action work
>>>> } else {
>>>> // denied
>>>> }
>>>>
>>>> ... i want to separate out logic like that into interceptors or some
>>>> other way so that the actions get that work for free and don't
have to
>>>> duplicate that code all over the place. same goes for things like
>>>> looking up the authenticated user and working weblog, which
basically
>>>> all actions require.
>>>>
>>>> i think i have some good ideas so far, but once i figure out which
>>>> ideas
>>>> i think are best i can run them by the list and see if others agree.
>>>>
>>>> -- Allen
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Matt Raible wrote:
>>>> > I'd love to help with this migration, but unfortunately have
too much
>>>> > on my plate to do anything. Since I've already done a Struts 1 ->
>>>> > Struts 2 migration on a couple projects, hopefully I can help
w/ any
>>>> > questions you might have. From the looks of it, you've probably
>>>> > figured most things out.
>>>> >
>>>> > Matt
>>>> >
>>>> > On 4/16/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>> >> I've spent a little time looking at this more closely and I've
got a
>>>> >> couple of the more basic actions migrated and so far
everything is
>>>> >> looking good and I don't think we'll have any problems running
>>>> struts1
>>>> >> and struts2 side-by-side while we migrate.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> I'd like to commit the work that I have so far which changes the
>>>> login
>>>> >> and registration pages to use struts2. I've setup the migration
>>>> process
>>>> >> (so far) in such a way that all of the struts2 code is basically
>>>> copied
>>>> >> and modified versions of the struts1 stuff, so there is
basically no
>>>> >> replacement or modifications. This way it's easy to see the two
>>>> side by
>>>> >> side while we work and we can easily switch between struts1 and
>>>> struts2
>>>> >> if that were ever necessary.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> So if nobody objects I'd like to commit my initial struts2
support
>>>> >> tomorrow. The commit list is this ...
>>>> >>
>>>> >> M metadata/xdoclet/global-forwards.xml
>>>> >> M metadata/xdoclet/servlet-mappings.xml
>>>> >> M metadata/xdoclet/filter-mappings.xml
>>>> >> M metadata/xdoclet/filters.xml
>>>> >> A src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/MigratingUIModel.java
>>>> >> A src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/struts2
>>>> >> A src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/struts2/LoginAction.java
>>>> >> A src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/struts2/RegisterForm.java
>>>> >> A src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/struts2/UIActionSupport.java
>>>> >> A
>>>> >>
src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/struts2/MigratingUIActionSupport.java
>>>> >> A
src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/struts2/RegisterFormBean.java
>>>> >> M
src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/struts/actions/LoginAction.java
>>>> >> M
>>>> src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/struts/actions/UserNewAction.java
>>>> >> A src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/util/UIUtils.java
>>>> >> A src/org/apache/roller/ui/core/UIModel.java
>>>> >> M build.xml
>>>> >> A tools/struts-2.0.5/lib/tiles-api-2.0-20070130.184344-3.jar
>>>> >> A tools/struts-2.0.5/lib/struts2-tiles-plugin-2.0.5.jar
>>>> >> A
tools/struts-2.0.5/lib/tiles-core-2.0-20070130.184344-3.jar
>>>> >> M properties.xmlf
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/tiles-mainmenupage.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/menu-editor.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/menu-admin.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/tiles-tabbedpage.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/css-nosidebar.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/footer.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/empty.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/css-sidebar.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/head.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/tiles-simplepage.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/tiles-errorpage.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/search.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/banner.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/messages.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/bannerStatus.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/tiles/struts2/title.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/core/struts2
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/core/struts2/RegisterForm.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/core/struts2/Login.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/core/struts2/Welcome.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/jsps/taglibs-struts2.jsp
>>>> >> M web/WEB-INF/jsps/setupBody.jsp
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/tiles.xml
>>>> >> M web/WEB-INF/security.xml
>>>> >> M web/WEB-INF/classes/roller.properties
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/classes/struts.properties
>>>> >> A web/WEB-INF/classes/struts.xml
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Anil Gangolli wrote:
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > The last paragraph sounds like a good start. I'm not familiar
>>>> with
>>>> >> > Struts 2 yet so won't be of much help.
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > --a.
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Allen Gilliland"
>>>> >> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>> >> > To: <dev@roller.apache.org>
>>>> >> > Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 2:36 PM
>>>> >> > Subject: struts1 -> struts2 migration
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> >> we talked about this in the 4.0 planning discussions and i
>>>> believe
>>>> >> >> that everyone was in agreement that starting with Roller 4.0
>>>> we would
>>>> >> >> be moving to jdk 1.5 and introducing struts2 as the next
>>>> generation
>>>> >> >> framework to replace our current struts1 stuff. since i am
>>>> planning
>>>> >> >> to do a reasonable amount of work which requires modifying or
>>>> adding
>>>> >> >> things to our authoring forms i'd really like to do them in
>>>> struts2 so
>>>> >> >> that my work isn't going to be wasted, so that means it's time
>>>> to at
>>>> >> >> least start the migration and get to a point where we start
>>>> developing
>>>> >> >> new pages and forms in struts2.
>>>> >> >>
>>>> >> >> i've started looking into this and playing around with it a
>>>> little bit
>>>> >> >> and if anyone else is interested in this then i would love to
>>>> get some
>>>> >> >> help. so far i've just done some reading on the topic and
>>>> noting down
>>>> >> >> a general strategy so if anyone has experience with this and
>>>> wants to
>>>> >> >> help, please let me know.
>>>> >> >>
>>>> >> >> right now i think my initial goal is to get the app configured
>>>> so that
>>>> >> >> struts1 and struts2 actions and forms can run side by side,
>>>> and then i
>>>> >> >> want to migrate a small set of the existing actions to
detail the
>>>> >> >> process.
>>>> >> >>
>>>> >> >> -- Allen
>>>> >> >>
>>>> >> >
>>>> >>
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>>
