HOW TO GET THE STRUTS FRAMEWORK AND ESPECIALLY THE STRUTS-EXAMPLE APP RUNNING USING VAJ3.5 AND TOMCAT This how-to describes the installation and configuration necessary to succesfully install and run the struts framework and struts based applications from within Visual Age For Java 3.5 The basis of this how-to is a correctly installed VAJ3.5, configured with the ability to run jakarta-tomcat (Not Tomcat Test Environment) thereby enabling the ability to debug the serverside code. I have heard that doing what we are about to do using the Tomcat Test Environment should be even easier. However, I like the fact that this installation is enterily based on software created by the Apache Foundation. The challenge in installing and configuring the struts framework and webapps to run within VAJ is basically that we must try to simulate the enviroment of .jar files and classes placed in the WEB-INF dir. Following this short guide it should be pretty simple The first time i tried this operation it took me most of a day, as I write this HOW-TO I'm going through the steps again (without notes) and it took me about 30 minutes... I would never have succeded in this without help from the struts-user mailing list especielly Juergen Walter, Jean-Noel Ribette and Dan Miser... Enjoy! Prerequisites: *Jakarta-Tomcat 3.2.1 *Jakarta-Struts 1.0-b1 SRC (currently jakarta-struts-1.0-b1-src.zip)! *Jakarta-Struts 1.0-b1 BINARY (Optionally) *A Tomcat Runner App (For running Tomcat from VAJ) For this you'll probably also need to add jakarta-servletapi-3.2-src.zip (the servlet API src) to your workspace If you havent got a Tomcat Runner get one at <a href="http://www.helenius.org/pages.php?page=Tomcat+Runner";>my homepage</a> *JDBC 2.0 Extension (or IBM Enterprise Extentions Libraries 3.5) added to your workspace *Jaxp (or another Sax Parser) in your workspace (Tomcat comes with jaxp.jar, just import this file) Other requirements Patience... HOW-TO Struts framework installtion 1.I presume you already have Tomcat and your Tomcat Runner up and runnign wothout problems. 2. Extract jakarta-struts-1.0-b1-src.zip to a temporary folder. Create a project Called Struts, and import from this temporary folder the contents of /src/share 3. By now you have all the Struts framework code you'll need in your workspace (Note: and alot of deprecated warnings) 4. DO NOT add the Struts project to the class path of your tomcat runner yet... Now its time to install the struts-example webapp. 1. the easiest way to do this is to copy the struts-example.war from the struts binary distribution into the webapps folder of tomcat d:\jakarta\jakarta-tomcat-3.2.1\webapps or something like that 2. Start your Tomcat Runner, this will deploy the struts-example webapp 3. You could try running it now...http://localhost:8080/struts-example/ it will/should run but it will run outside of VAJ... Configuring the struts-example webapp (this IS the hard part) 1. Delete the struts.jar file from struts-example/WEB-INF/lib 2. Add the struts project to your Tomcat Runners classpath. 3. Create a project called strutsexample, and import /src/example from the struts source in the temporary folder we created earlier...This is the code we would like to debug later on... Back to the struts framework 1. Create the following folders VAJ Installation Folder\ide\project_resources\Struts\org\apache\struts\resources and copy the following files from struts src distribution \src\conf to here struts.tld struts-config_1_0.dtd web-app_2_2.dtd web-app_2_3.dtd The files above is the struts framework configurations files (usually shipped in the struts.jar, but as we aren't using the .jar we need to make available in our workspace) We return to the webapp 1. The last thing we need to do now is to make sure that our webapp running in the workspace has access to its ApplicationResources.properties file. Create the following folders VAJ Installation Folder\ide\project_resources\Struts\org\apache\struts\example and copy the original ApplicationResources.properties file from the struts-example\WEB-INF\classes\org\apache\struts\example to here... 2. (Optional) Delete the contents of the struts-example\WEB-INF\classes\ 3. Start your Tomcat Runner and point your browser to http://localhost:8080/struts-example/index.jsp Did it work?? It should!! --------------------------------------------------------- Any Comments and suggestion?? mail me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] this how-to will be available at www.helenius.org soon... thanks Mikkel Bruun
