On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Taylor, Jason wrote:
> Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 13:54:29 -0800 > From: "Taylor, Jason" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Reply-To: Struts Developers List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: 'Struts Developers List' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: RE: [SURVEY] HREF attribute for FormTag > > I thought I addressed the form bean instance issue in my response to Craig's > post. The 'action' attribute would still work for finding the form bean > since getActionMappingName would return the same thing it always has. What > I'm talking about would *absolutely* support the form-bean identification > behavior of the existing FormTag. > Early in the development of Struts, it became clear that relative URLs often failed to work the way people thought they would when a RequestDisaptcher.forward() is used (as Struts typically does to forward control to the view). In particular, developers expected them to be resolved against the URL of the JSP page (or whatever) itself -- instead, the browser would resolve them against the originally submitted-to URL. > I addressed the motivation for the proposal in the original posting. Bug > #12600 includes a description of a bridged architecture where a front end > web server forwards requests to a back end servlet container, expanding an > app-specific domain name into a generic domain name followed by the > application context path. This architecture works nicely so far as your > links are all relative. FormTag breaks this by always prepending context > path. > > Moreover, I believe the current prepending behavior is not a best practice > for JSPs, and I don't think I'm the only one who would see it this way. As > an article cited on the JSTL specification home page > (http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2002/08/14/jstl1.html?page=3) by Hans > Bergsten states while describing the <c:url> tag: > "relative URLs in HTML elements must either be relative to the page > that contains them or to the root directory of the server (if they start > with a slash). The first part of a URL path for a JSP page is called the > context path, and it may vary from installation to installation. You should > therefore avoid hard-coding the context path in the JSP pages." > The action attribute of an <html:form> tag is not a URL -- it is a lookup key into a table of valid actions. Therefore, this rationale is not relevant. In turn, Struts promises to compute a valid URL for you, no matter what the context path is, no matter which sub-app module prefix you are in (if any), and no matter what kind of controller servlet mapping you are using. Relative paths would be very brittle on at least the latter two issues. > What I'm trying to determine is whether the best means of achieving support > for the 'page-relative' URLs Bergsten describes is by adding an 'href' > attribute or changing the FormTag so that it wouldn't prepend the context > path unless the 'action' attribute started with a slash. I think the latter > is better, but I'd like to know if anyone has an opinion before I offer a > patch. Any ideas? It seems unlikely that any change to the interpretation of the "action" attribute itself can be made that won't break backwards compatibility for some existing Struts apps (and therefore earn my immediate -1). > > -JT > Craig > -----Original Message----- > From: David Graham [mailto:dgraham1980@;hotmail.com] > Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 12:40 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [SURVEY] HREF attribute for FormTag > > > You still haven't addressed why you want to do this. If <html:form> can't > lookup the form bean because the action doesn't match an action mapping, > then the other html form related tags are basically useless. You could just > > use straight html for this. > > David > > > > > > > >From: "Taylor, Jason" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Reply-To: "Struts Developers List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >To: "'Struts Developers List'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Subject: RE: [SURVEY] HREF attribute for FormTag > >Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 12:21:51 -0800 > > > >My first thought was you could use the 'action' to identify the form bean > >and the 'href' to specify a certain url to submit the form to. > > > >But then I looked at the JSTL <c:url> tag and it seems that a better > >algorithm would be to prepend the context path only when the 'action' > >begins > >with a slash ("/"). This seems better, and here's how it would work: > > > ><html:form action="login.do"> > > would become > ><FORM ACTION="login.do"> > > > >and > > > ><html:form action="/login"> or <html:form action="/login.do"> > > would become > ><FORM ACTION="/myApp/login.do"> > > or > ><FORM ACTION="/myApp/module/login.do"> > > as appropriate > > > >Perhaps if this were the right behavior, we would add a 'contextRelative' > >attribute to allow a form to be submitted across modules as with > >ActionForward. > > > > > >-JT > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: Craig R. McClanahan [mailto:craigmcc@;apache.org] > >Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 11:13 AM > >To: Struts Developers List > >Subject: Re: [SURVEY] HREF attribute for FormTag > > > > > > > > > >On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Taylor, Jason wrote: > > > > > Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 10:38:21 -0800 > > > From: "Taylor, Jason" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Reply-To: Struts Developers List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > To: 'Struts Developers List' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Subject: [SURVEY] HREF attribute for FormTag > > > > > > Hi all-- > > > > > > There have been two bugs (#12600, #13871) logged against the form tag > >for > > > the behavior of its getActionMappingUrl method, which always prepends > >the > > > context path. > > > > > > Other html tags that produce a URL that is sent to the browser such as > > > LinkTag and ImgTag give the user at least the option of specifying > >precisely > > > the URL sent, but FormTag does not. See bug #12600 for an example of an > > > architecture where this could be a problem, or consider the case of > >someone > > > building a Struts application that submits a form to a third party for > > > processing, which just occurred to me as another test case. > > > > > > Does anyone oppose the idea of adding an 'href' attribute to FormTag, > >along > > > the lines of the 'href' attribute possessed by the LinkTag, that can be > >used > > > instead of the 'action' to determine where the form is submitted? If > >so, > >do > > > you have an alternative that allows me to prevent the context path from > > > being prepended? If not, I'd be happy to submit a patch. > > > > > > >One of the things you'd give up when doing this is the ability of Struts > >to identify the associated form bean. Therefore, it seems like this would > >only be of use in constructing a form to be submitted to a non-Struts app > >-- and, for that, you can just use a normal HTML <form> element directly. > >Am I missing something? > > > > > -JT > > > > > > >Craig > > > > > >-- > >To unsubscribe, e-mail: > ><mailto:struts-dev-unsubscribe@;jakarta.apache.org> > >For additional commands, e-mail: > ><mailto:struts-dev-help@;jakarta.apache.org> > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Get a speedy connection with MSN Broadband. Join now! > http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/freeactivation.asp > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:struts-dev-unsubscribe@;jakarta.apache.org> > For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:struts-dev-help@;jakarta.apache.org> > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:struts-dev-unsubscribe@;jakarta.apache.org> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:struts-dev-help@;jakarta.apache.org>
