In theory, the struts actions are extensions of the controller (or model, depending on how you interpret it) in the MVC paradigm. They can represent the actual business logic, but in practice they are used as delegates--calling business objects to do the work. Hence struts actions are like a service layer for the front-end, interacting with the business layer. Looking at cocoon actions, they return a Map containing information used for display purposes. This can be done in struts actions by explicitly putting the information into the request (usually encapsulated as a bean) that can be easily manipulated with struts or jstl tags.
Therefore my understanding thus far about cocoon when comparing it to struts is that the cocoon actions are "similar" to struts actions. Do you use cocoon actions more often then the *traditional* pipeline for doing MVC applications? I really don't see anywhere else in the cocoon framework where there is an explicit class that handles requests, calls services from the business layer and returns a response. Everything else in cocoon seems to be all transformations of some sort.
Also, struts has a neat thing with declaring forms. There is the traditional way of creating POJOs via ActionForms and there is the declarative way defined in the struts-config called DynaForms. In cocoon, I see something called "woody" and "xforms". I have no clue how these forms are used within the cocoon framework, particular with cocoon actions. In struts, the form used for submission is explicitly passed to the action handling the form. In cocoon actions, I don't see any woody form being passed in...
Any more suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!
-los
From: Ralph Goers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: new to cocoon question Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 09:11:31 -0800
Pardon my ignorance on Struts as I haven't used it extensively either, but
my recollection is that Struts invokes Actions which then return a forward -
in essence telling the controller what to do next based upon what the
business logic for the action did. This, in essence and IMO, makes the
Action more knowledgeable than it should be.
Cocoon's notion of an action is somewhat different, although it can be
subverted to behave very similarly to a Struts action. Typically actions in
Cocoon simply return information in a Map object. The pipeline is
configured to operate upon that data in any manner it sees fit. Thus, the
action is in the business of simply returning information rather than acting
as a director.
Ralph
-----Original Message----- From: Derek Hohls [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2004 8:57 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: new to cocoon question
Interesting question - in brief, actions are primarily used *inside* pipelines to act as logic "switches" between different choices; or to allow easy handling of case failures. I am not sure how this corresponds to what Struts does - I actually would like to find out more about Struts as there a number of developers I know that use it, to whom I'd like to relate a little better - if there is any reading you can point me towards to grasp that framework's approaches, I'd be happy to share any comparisons I find (as this is something I want to do anyway...)
Derek
D Hohls Environmental Systems Developer CSIR Environmentek PO Box 17001 Kwa-Zulu Natal South Africa 4013 www.csir.co.za
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_________________________________________________________________
Frustrated with dial-up? Lightning-fast Internet access for as low as $29.95/month. http://click.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200360ave/direct/01/
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
