Ted Husted wrote:

> Using the same element name more than once is really only the tip of the iceberg. We 
>can also delete or rename a 
> form bean from the file and Struts will not catch the problem until runtime.

Not in my system!  :)  XDoclet to the rescue.  Form bean definitions are 
generated completely - move a class to a different package, delete it, 
rename it, no problem.


> Heck, we can set validate to true 
> and omit the input property and not catch the problem until validate actually fails.

Now this is a problem.

> Or now specify an input 
> forward that doesn't exist.

Again, a problem.

> We can also specify entries from the Application Resources that don't exist

Using my DbResources, this is not a "problem" per se.  No crash, only 
the resource string returned is the config/locale/key combination 
requested giving a very visual indication that something is missing.

>, or ask 
> Actions to find forwards that can't be found.

Again, a problem.  And this one could be very tough to find with a tool, 
but Cactus tests (using StrutsTestCase) find these easily.

> Forms can specify formbean properties that don't exist, 

True.  But we have a starter JSP generator that generates the fields 
from a form bean using XDoclet.  So that issue doesn't crop up until we 
add a field later, but the problem is minimized.


> ActionMappings can specify classes that don't exist, and so on.

XDoclet *could* take care of this, but I choose not to codify action 
mappings with @tags, but do it separately.

> I agree that it would be a Good Thing if someone were to write a utility that vetted 
>the configuration to be 
> sure all the references resolved, but doing a proper job with something like this 
>sounds like a task for 1.1+.  

If we ever got into a situation where these problems cropped up often, 
I'd build something to catch them, but I've not found these to be much 
of a problem using XDoclet for some of the dirty work, as well as other 
tricks.

        Erik

p.s. on the topic of Validator - its working nicely for us.  We end up 
writing some custom validations, but for the most part we've not had any 
problems with it.  I saw earlier that the DTD issue I encountered has 
been fixed - but I worked around it with XDoclet's generation of 
validation.xml by omitting the DTD from the output.


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