ActionContext chain changes committed

[Joe Germuska]

I have just committed the suite of changes I was emailing about a few 
weeks ago.  Please be aware that nightly builds are probably now the 
least stable that they've been in some time.  I have spent some time 
this weekend working on a simple site using the new code (including 
struts-taglib and struts-tiles jars build from SVN head) and things 
aren't horribly broken, but there may be some quirks.  Odds are good 
that most of them have to do with the ServletActionContext class not 
always putting things in request scope that JSPs or utility classes 
are accustomed to retrieving from the request scope.  I find it kind 
of odd to store things in both places, but it seems like a necessity 
for a while for backwards compatibility.

I hope to continue using this code as I begin prototype work on a new 
project, but of course, the more people who can get their hands on 
this code, the better.

This also installs the "split" between the "process-action" and 
"process-view" sub-chains, although I haven't yet changed the 
SelectInput command to return "false" to eliminate the need for later 
commands to check to see if the form was valid.

I think the big outstanding question in my mind now is what kind of 
context we want to pass into the "process-view" subchain.  In some 
earlier discussions, there was talk about a "ViewContext" -- I 
haven't touched that at all, but I'm whether it's worth 
distinguishing that from the ActionContext.  As it is now, I have my 
own command which sometimes gets used in the view chain and sometimes 
in the action chain; as it is now, I have to test whether the context 
is an ActionContext or a ServletWebContext -- I need to get to the 
request parameters and scope/map, and by not using the ActionContext 
in the view, it seems more awkward than it should be.

It would be pretty easy just to change the chain-config.xml file to 
use the new WrappingLookupCommand so that the same ActionContext gets 
sent into both "halves," but I didn't want to do that just yet.  I'd 
like to hear if anyone has justifications for a different kind of 
context for a "ViewContext" (noting that I have one real use case 
where the same command is used in both sides, so a ViewContext would 
be just as awkward as what I have now.)  I was also wondering whether 
we ought to routinely put the context into the request scope so that 
that object is available to view technologies like JSPs and Velocity 
templates.  It seems like it would be handy.

So, for the brave, please dive in and start trying to apply the SVN 
head to some applications and help to flush out anything that's not 
quite right...

Joe
--
Joe Germuska
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://blog.germuska.com
"Narrow minds are weapons made for mass destruction"  -The Ex
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