I'm new to Struts and liking it so far. But I'm stumped on how I can get a user of my
web application to stay in the same subdirectory throughout the workflow without going
through a lot of hoops.
Here's what I mean. Our application will be used by 100 people divided into six work
groups. Each group has access only to their section of the web site. And each
section of the web site will have about five different functions, for example an
upload a file section, an Events listing section, an bulletin board section.
The code/functionality in each section is identical from group to group, so I want to
use the same set of JSPs and Actions for each group. (That re-use thing.)
To make the security managable, I've organized the site (and corresponding URLs) in a
directory hierarchy like this:
/app1/areas/group1/section1
/app1/areas/group1/section2
/app1/areas/group1/section3
...
/app1/areas/group2/section1
/app1/areas/group2/section2
/app1/areas/group2/section3
...
Where I'm having trouble is staying in the same section. If a member of group1 goes
to section1, and my actions are defined like this :
<action forward="input.jsp" path="input" />
that takes the user to /app1/input.do, which is outside the "section". If I change my
actions to specify the absolute path for each Action, it works, but I have to create
six sets of actions, one for each section, like this:
<action forward="input.jsp" path="/app1/areas/group1/section1/input" />
That works, but ... is that how I'm *supposed* to to do it? I'm just getting started
and I've got a butt-load of Actions. I don't want to manage them in sextuples. That
seems repetitive and error prone, along with being a maintenance headache.
Any help would be appreciated. It seems like this problem must have been solved
elegantly somehow, but I'm lost as to how.
Dave
