Spring and Struts Integration Tutorial Part 2: Java-Based and Annotations

Details: Written by Nam Ha Minh; Last Updated on 21 June 2019 | Print Email

Welcome to the second part of Spring and Struts integration series. In the first part, we discussed what is the need for the integration of Spring and Struts, as well as how does it work. You also learned how to implement a Spring-Struts type of application through a sample project using XML configuration.

In this part, you will learn how to develop a Spring-Struts web application with Java-based and annotations configuration instead of XML files. There is absolutely no XML! We skip the project setup and almost Maven dependencies because they are very similar to the first part. So you may need to refer to the tutorial Spring 4 and Struts 2 Integration Tutorial Part 1: XML Configuration in order to know how to setup the project and Maven dependencies.

So what does the sample application do? Well, it shows a typical login form in which the user can enter username and password which are, if correct a welcome page gets displayed; otherwise an error page is shown.

Now, let’s walk through the project step-by-step. We named the project as Spring4Struts2IntegrationAnnotations.

1. Adding Maven Dependencies

All the required dependencies are almost as same as the part 1. The only new dependency is the Struts2 Convention Plug-in which enables annotation-based configuration for mapping actions and results in Struts. So add the following dependency into your pom.xml file:

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.apache.struts</groupId>
	<artifactId>struts2-convention-plugin</artifactId>
	<version>2.3.20</version>
</dependency>

You can see that the latest version of Struts 2 framework is used, 2.3.20. To understand more about Struts 2 annotations, refer to Struts2 Beginner Tutorial with Annotations.

2. Coding Model Class

The model class (User.java) is pretty simple. Here’s the code:

/** 
 * Copyright (C) CodeJava.net from 2012 To Present
 * All rights reserved. 
 */
package net.codejava.struts;

public class User {
	private String username;
	private String email;
	private String password;

	public String getUsername() {
		return username;
	}

	public void setUsername(String username) {
		this.username = username;
	}

	public String getEmail() {
		return email;
	}

	public void setEmail(String email) {
		this.email = email;
	}

	public String getPassword() {
		return password;
	}

	public void setPassword(String password) {
		this.password = password;
	}
}

3. Coding Login Form

Create a directory called views under WEB-INF directory which is under WebContent (or web-app). Then create a file named LoginForm.jsp with the following code:

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
    pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags" %>    
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
	"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Spring and Struts Integration Demo</title>
</head>
<body>
	<div align="center">
		<h1>Spring and Struts Integration Demo</h1>
		<h2>Users Login</h2>
		<s:form action="doLogin" method="post">
			<s:textfield label="Username" name="user.username" />
			<s:password label="Password" name="user.password" />
			<s:submit value="Login" />
		</s:form>				
	</div>	
</body>
</html>

Note that the URL in the form’s action attribute is: /doLogin. We’ll configure an appropriate action class to handle this URL later.

4. Coding Success and Error Pages

The LoginSuccess.jsp and LoginError.jsp pages are as same as in the part 1. We list the code here for your convenience.

Code of the Success page:

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
    pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Login Success</title>
</head>
<body>
	<div align="center">
		<h1>Welcome to CodeJava.net</h1>
	</div>
</body>
</html>

Code of the Error page:

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
    pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Login Error</title>
</head>
<body>
	<div align="center">
		<h1>Error login. Wrong username/password</h1>
	</div>
</body>
</html>

You will see how to configure redirection to these pages in the next section about Struts action classes.

5. Coding Business Class

The business class (UserDAO.java) is quite simple. It has only one method: checkLogin(). Here’s the code:

/** 
 * Copyright (C) CodeJava.net from 2012 To Present
 * All rights reserved. 
 */
package net.codejava.struts;


public class UserDAO {
	public boolean checkLogin(User user) {
		return user.getUsername().equals("admin")
				&& user.getPassword().equals("nimda");
	}
}

You will see how to auto-wire this business class into a Struts action class in the next section.

6. Coding Struts Action Classes

There are two action classes we need to create in this application. The first one is used to handle the URL /login by redirecting to the Login form.

Code of the ViewLoginAction class:

/** 
 * Copyright (C) CodeJava.net from 2012 To Present
 * All rights reserved. 
 */
package net.codejava.struts;

import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.Action;
import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.Result;
import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.ResultPath;

import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport;

@Action("login")
@ResultPath("/WEB-INF/views")
@Result(name = "success", location = "LoginForm.jsp")
public class ViewLoginAction extends ActionSupport {
	// this is intentionally empty
}

And the second action class (DoLoginAction.java) is for handling submission from the login form (URL /doLogin). Here’s its code:

/** 
 * Copyright (C) CodeJava.net from 2012 To Present
 * All rights reserved. 
 */
package net.codejava.struts;

import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.Action;
import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.Result;
import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.ResultPath;
import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.Results;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;

import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport;

@Action("/doLogin")
@ResultPath("/WEB-INF/views")
@Results({
	@Result(name = "success", location = "LoginSuccess.jsp"),
	@Result(name = "error", location = "LoginError.jsp")
})
public class DoLoginAction extends ActionSupport {
	@Autowired
	private UserDAO userDAO;
	private User user;

	public void setUser(User user) {
		this.user = user;
	}
	
	public User getUser() {
		return user;
	}

	public String execute() {
		if (userDAO.checkLogin(user)) {
			return SUCCESS;
		}
		
		return ERROR;
	}
}

Note that the @Autowired annotation (from Spring) is used to let Spring automatically inject an instance of the UserDAO class into the instance of this action class:

@Autowired
private UserDAO userDAO;

You’ll see how to let Spring manage an instance of the UserDAO class in the next section.

7. Bootstrapping Struts and Spring Programmatically

This is the most important part of the application because it enables the integration between Struts and Spring in a single web application, using 100% Java code and no XML at all.

First, create the WebAppInitializer class with the following code:

/** 
 * Copyright (C) CodeJava.net from 2012 To Present
 * All rights reserved. 
 */
package net.codejava.struts.config;

import java.util.EnumSet;

import javax.servlet.DispatcherType;
import javax.servlet.FilterRegistration;
import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;

import org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.ng.filter.StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter;
import org.springframework.web.WebApplicationInitializer;
import org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener;
import org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext;

public class WebAppInitializer implements WebApplicationInitializer {

	@Override
	public void onStartup(ServletContext servletContext) throws ServletException {
        AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext appContext
        	= new AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext();
        appContext.register(ApplicationContextConfig.class);
        
        ContextLoaderListener contextLoaderListener = new ContextLoaderListener(appContext);
        servletContext.addListener(contextLoaderListener);
        
        FilterRegistration.Dynamic filter = servletContext.addFilter(
        		"StrutsDispatcher", new StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter());
        filter.addMappingForUrlPatterns(EnumSet.of(DispatcherType.REQUEST), true, "/*");
	}
}

You can see that the Spring framework is configured as a context listener:

AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext appContext
	= new AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext();
appContext.register(ApplicationContextConfig.class);

ContextLoaderListener contextLoaderListener = new ContextLoaderListener(appContext);
servletContext.addListener(contextLoaderListener);

On start-up, Spring looks for configuration in the ApplicationContextConfig class which is described in the next section.

And the Struts framework is configured as the primary dispatcher filter:

FilterRegistration.Dynamic filter = servletContext.addFilter(
		"StrutsDispatcher", new StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter());
filter.addMappingForUrlPatterns(EnumSet.of(DispatcherType.REQUEST), true, "/*");

This configuration allows Struts framework intercepts all requests coming through the application.

For more information regarding how to bootstrap a framework programmatically in Java EE, see the tutorial: Bootstrapping a Spring Web MVC application programmatically.

8. Configuring Spring Application Context

In this integration, Spring acts as a dependency injection container so it is used to manage beans and inject dependencies if any. Create the ApplicationContextConfig class with the following code:

/** 
 * Copyright (C) CodeJava.net from 2012 To Present
 * All rights reserved. 
 */
package net.codejava.struts.config;

import net.codejava.struts.UserDAO;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration
@ComponentScan("net.codejava.struts")
public class ApplicationContextConfig {
	
	@Bean(name = "userDAO")
	public UserDAO getUserDAO() {
		return new UserDAO();
	}	
}

Here, we declare only one bean instance for the UserDAO class, which is then injected into the Struts action class. That’s all for the code stuffs.

9. Reviewing Final Project Structure

Finally we have the project looks like as the following screenshot:

Project Structure

Refer to this structure in case you did something wrong.

10. Testing the Application

Testing is the same as the part 1. The only difference is the URL of the login form. Type the following URL:

http://localhost:8080/Spring4Struts2IntegrationAnnotations/login

Then the login form appears. Enter username as ‘admin’ and password as ‘nimda’, and then hit Enter. You will see the success page; otherwise the error page gets displayed.

Congratulations! You have done the second part of Spring and Struts integration series. You can now master the key concepts and techniques in implementing a Spring-Struts application.

References:

About the Author:

Nam Ha Minh is certified Java programmer (SCJP and SCWCD). He began programming with Java back in the days of Java 1.4 and has been passionate about it ever since. You can connect with him on Facebook and watch his Java videos on YouTube.

Attachments:
Spring4Struts2IntegrationAnnotations.zip	[Sample Spring-Struts Eclipse Project]	23 kB

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Comments

#4Praveen2018-07-25 09:07

It is giving me the below error.
Can you please check and help me here.
SEVERE: Exception sending context initialized event to listener instance of class org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.getDependencyComparator()Ljava/util/Comparator;

Quote

#3Sada2018-05-09 04:26

I am unable to run this application. Getting 404 error msg

Quote

#2Juan2017-05-08 13:29

Are struts2 actions really created and managed by Spring? If yes, where is the scope of the action set?
Why do not you use Spring's @Component annotation?

Quote

#1Israel2015-04-13 23:15

Excellent tutorial, It's very useful for me.

Quote

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Spring and Struts Integration Tutorial Part 2: Java-Based and Annotations

1. Adding Maven Dependencies

2. Coding Model Class

3. Coding Login Form

4. Coding Success and Error Pages

5. Coding Business Class

6. Coding Struts Action Classes

7. Bootstrapping Struts and Spring Programmatically

8. Configuring Spring Application Context

9. Reviewing Final Project Structure

10. Testing the Application

References:

Related Spring-Struts Integration Tutorials:

Other Spring Tutorials:

About the Author:

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