Well, I would say it depends. If I had a DTO ( a domain object) which had all the fields I needed to display...including types like int, Date, boolean, etc... I would probably just pass that along to the form bean and let view helpers like the Struts tags or JSTL render the contents. With JSTL you can format Dates and numbers. I believe those tags leverage the java.text.* package for formatting data.
If I needed to perform some specialized formatting which could not be done by view helpers then I may just convert the necessary fields to Strings (maybe using BeanUtils) format them, and populate my ActionForm. If the view I needed of the data was not encapsulated in a single DTO, then you could retrieve multiple DTO objects and rendered them as described above or use a pattern described as Transfer Object Assembler which builds a custom DTO or a collection of customer DTO objects which you could pass along to the ActionForm. You can read more about Transfer Object Assembler here: http://java.sun.com/blueprints/corej2eepatterns/Patterns/TransferObjectAssembler.html robert > -----Original Message----- > From: Nick Wesselman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 6:28 PM > To: Struts Users Mailing List > Subject: Re: action - delegate - facade > > > What about when simply displaying data on a page? Do developers > typically copy data out of the domain object just to display it? (As > opposed to using it w/ a form.) > > The only issue I see is that you may end up introducing view helper > methods to your model beans. > > Nick > > Robert Taylor wrote: > > >Adam, its frowned upon to pass a web tier object (XXXXActionForm) into the business > >tier. I believe a widely used technique is to use BeanUtils to copy the properties > >from the XXXXActionForm to a DTO (a Domain Object) which can be passed to the > >business tier. > > > >robert > > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
