Darren: Sorry for the delay in replying -- I didn't see your message until just now.
If I understand what you're saying, you're doing ALMOST exactly what I did. I would add that the reason you can do it this simply is because your choice is binary: validate/don't validate. Mine was a little more complex, because in my "select" action, I wanted the user to be able to select based on a date field, and I wanted the date to be validated as a proper date. Therefore, my choice wasn't yes/no, but validate with one set of validation criteria or validate with another set of validation criteria. That's where defining multiple <form-bean>s in my struts-config.xml came in; I needed to be able to direct the action to one or the other <form-name> and its validation rules in my validation.xml, and the <form-bean> name is the key to doing that. You might want to keep that part of the solution in your pocket for future reference; even with selection criteria, although the fields aren't required, you may want to validate them if present. Finally: As I said before, I am certainly no Struts expert, but everything I've read says that Struts loads only one instance of your Action, and I'm reasonably sure that this is based on the classname; in other words, if two mappings reference the same canonical Action class, only one instance is created. Others who know more than I do are free to comment. -----Original Message----- From: Darren Hill [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 9:19 AM To: 'Struts Users Mailing List' Subject: RE: ValidatorForm Hey Charles, Thanks for the input ... what I ended up doing is creating 2 actions-mapping for one LookupDispatchAction. One mapping validates and the other doesn't. So my logic remians intect within one LookupDispatchAction class, while I can enter the flow with/without validation. Makes sense? My concern is that I will now have 2 instances of one action. Is that true? Darren. -----Original Message----- From: Charles McClain [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: September 27, 2002 6:31 PM To: 'Struts Users Mailing List' Subject: RE: ValidatorForm Darren: Bear in mind that I'm relatively new to Struts and don't have all the answers, nevertheless, I'll try to point you in the right direction. I had exactly the same problem, with the exception that I used a simple DispatchAction rather than a LookupDispatchAction. I found Struts Tip #5 on Jguru, written by Ted Husted and titled, "Use coarse-grained ActionForms ", which emphasized the distinction between <form-bean>s and ActionForms -- and by extension, ValidatorForms. The essence of it was that you can create multiple <form-bean>s in your struts-config.xml which refer to the same ValidatorForm, and that your validation.xml <form name="xxx"> goes by the <form-bean> name. Thus, by creating one <form-bean> for your "view" and/or "create", and another for your "update", and by creating corresponding <form name="xxx"> entries in validation.xml (each with its own validation rules), you can have different validations (including a null rule set, meaning no validation) for the same ValidatorForm. This does, however, cause you to make some decisions about your JSPs. Unless you want to create separate JSPs to represent the two ValidatorForms, you have to jump through some hoops to have your JSP figure out which formBean its being passed to it (various tags require the formBean name). And if you want to vary the messages, button captions, etc., on your JSP, you then have to use a bunch of logic:equal tags to interrogate the formBean name. Anyway, if you do decide to go this route, Chris Bartley sent me some code which successfully retrieves the formBean name in your JSP. Here it is: <bean:define id="actionMappingForThisScreen" name="org.apache.struts.action.mapping.instance" type="org.apache.struts.action.ActionMapping"/> <bean:define id="formName" name="actionMappingForThisScreen" property="name" type="java.lang.String" /> <bean:define id="formBean" name="<%= formName %>" type="org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm"/> Good luck, and if you figure out how to more easily re-use the same JSP for all your actions, please post it. -----Original Message----- From: Darren Hill [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 10:42 Am To: 'Struts Users Mailing List' Subject: ValidatorForm ur Question. I have a ValidatorForm form that works with a LookupDispatchAction. One of the the actions is 'view'. But this populates the form after validation. The question is ... how can I selectively validate a ValiatorForm ( ie. Don't validate for 'view', 'create', but validate for 'update', etc ) Darren -- 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]> -- 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]>
