If I understand you your suggesting extending Struts beyond presentation to a DO which is a representation of your data model. I think by providing this sort of linkage from the HttpRequest all the way to your RemoteInterface? - you would inherantly be forcing your presentation logic into the business logic. You would end up designing your presentation as a mirror of your database model or even worse: visa-versa. This would make a very inflexable system.
I have enough trouble changing all of my ActionForm elements into String[] - I think everything in the database would be varchar2(100) (=)) Cheers, Stan Brandon Goodin wrote: >Greetings, > >A few thoughts about the Action Form: > >1) ActionForm is a view object >2) ActionForm is populated by ActionServlet mapped to request parameters >3) ActionForm should NOT be passed into the Business Logic Tier but should >stay in the application Tier >4) ActionForm should NOT be used as a Model Bean. > >Being as these are true and it sometimes seems to cause extra coding to >translate form values to beans. In other words. When I write a form and it >contains values that need to be passed to a bean that is then passed to a >business object. The process involves the following: > >1) Write ActionForm to collect request (data or use DynaActionForm) >2) Write a model bean that will receive some or all of the data from the >ActionForm >3) Use BeanUtils within an Action class to transfer values from bean to bean >4) Pass bean to business object > >My thoughts here are around the ActionForm using beans instead of it's own >getters and setters. Is there a reason why we don't have the ActionForm >instantiate beans to be populated. That way those beans can easily be >extracted from the ActionForm and passed into the business tier. The >ActionForm could be configured to instantiate and populate certain beans. It >would be nice to allow for multiple beans to be configured and if the beans >have a common setter and getter then both instantiated bean setters will be >populated with request data. Once the beans are populated with request info >those same beans can be passed into a business tier using the Action class >or they can be passed back to the view wrapped with the ActionForm. I know I >am thinking simplistic at this point. But, I think the idea has some sound >qualities. Maybe this is already implemented and I am just off my rocker or >maybe it just sucks. I would be interested to hear any thoughts on this. So >the process would go something like this: > >1) Write model beans >2) Configure ActionForm to populate certain model beans with request data >3) Allow for validation of values and any other ActionForm methods to be >performed. >4) pass ActionForm with associated beans onto Action class or return to view >with errors >5) use Action class to extract beans from ActionForm and pass them into >Business Tier > >This thought was spawned during a discussion with a colleague regarding >passing ActionForms into the business tier. I felt it was a bad idea because >it is tying you biz tier too tightly to the app tier. But his rebuttal was >that the alternative was that we wind up coding more and gaining very little >(i.e. writing identical code just to populate a form then pass that value to >a bean). How often are we going to be running this outside webapp using >struts, anyways? > >I know there is DynaActionForm but I have also heard there are some >shortcomings on it. What are those shortcomings? The issue here seems to be >the extra coding. I know the combo of the DynaActionForm and BeanUtils >allows for a sort of what I am talking about. You only have to write the >model bean then use BeanUtils to populate it with the DynaActionForm values. >Yet, I have also tried to run DynaActionForm side by side with Validator and >I have run into problems. Anyways, it just seems more appropriate to use >concrete Bean classes and that is why I am providing the aforementioned >idea. > >Any thoughts? > > > >Definitions: >----------------------------- >Business Tier - contains model beans and business logic >----------------------------- >Application Tier - Struts Controller and data marshalling >----------------------------- >Web Tier - Application Server > > > >Brandon Goodin >Phase Web and Multimedia >P (406) 862-2245 >F (406) 862-0354 > > >-- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
