I am fairly new to struts and want to learn how to do things the "right"
way. Unfortunately, I haven't found a definitive, practical answer from
looking at the example webapps, so I am hoping a more experienced user could
give me some advice, which I promise to pass on to others :-)
I am getting up to speed on struts by programming a small application that
has only one JSP page. Whenever you visit this page (/index.jsp), it will
fetch some headlines from across the Web using a SOAP call. The code to do
the SOAP is neatly packaged in a jarfile, and for simplicity, let's say it
works like this:
Headlines h = new Headlines("http://www.foo.com/headlines";, 10);
where the parameters are the site to get the headlines from and the number
(int) of how many headlines to fetch.
When someone goes to the /index.jsp page for the first time, I want to
populate the page with headlines using the default values above. On that
same page, I want them to have the ability to choose a site from a select
box and type a number of headlines to fetch in a text box. This page will
just submit back to itself.
I know that I need a form bean to handle getting the form values to the
class to fetch the headlines, but my questions are:
1. How do I populate it the *first* time a user visits the page (before any
form is filled out). Do I just make the form bean's default value for
URL="http://www.foo.com/headlines"; and the default value for numHeadlines=10
?
2. I simplified the work behind the SOAP call to explain my point, but do I
put the actual code (about 20 lines) for making the call into the
ActionClass? Or do I put it into the FormBean somehow? Or somewhere else?
Should the code that catches and handles exceptions go there too?
3. How do I make the Headlines object available to the JSP page? As a bean
put into session scope?
4. Should the URL that I advertise to users be /index.jsp or should it
match the action, like /showArticles.do ? I know it's a best practice to
use /do/ rather than *.do, but I want to keep it simple for the moment.
5. What might the struts-config.xml look like for this type of action?
Thanks *very* much for any help you can give. After I finish this example
app, I plan to make it (and the source) available for others to look at for
guidance.
Tom
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