Tutorial: Creating Struts application in Eclipse

[ad name=”AD_INBETWEEN_POST”] Note: If you looking for tutorial “Create Struts2 Application in Eclipse” Click here. In this tutorial we will create a hello world Struts application in Eclipse editor. We will implement a web application using Struts framework which will have a login screen. Once the user is authenticated, (s)he will be redirected to a welcome page. Let us start with our first struts based web application. First let us see what are the tools required to create our hello world Struts application.

JDK 1.5 above (download)
Tomcat 5.x above or any other container (Glassfish, JBoss, Websphere, Weblogic etc) (download)
Eclipse 3.2.x above (download)
Apache Struts JAR files:(download). Following are the list of JAR files required for this application.
- struts.jar
- common-logging.jar
- common-beanutils.jar
- common-collections.jar
- common-digester.jar

Open Eclipse and goto File -> New -> Project and select Dynamic Web Project in the New Project wizard screen.

After selecting Dynamic Web Project, press Next.

Write the name of the project. For example StrutsHelloWorld. Once this is done, select the target runtime environment (e.g. Apache Tomcat v6.0). This is to run the project inside Eclipse environment. After this press Finish. Once the project is created, you can see its structure in Project Explorer.

Now copy all the required JAR files in WebContent -> WEB-INF -> lib folder. Create this folder if it does not exists. [ad#blogs_content_inbetween]

Next step is to create a servlet entry in web.xml which points to org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet class of struts framework. Open web.xml file which is there under WEB-INF folder and copy paste following code.

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>
   org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet
  </servlet-class>
  <init-param>
   <param-name>config</param-name>
   <param-value>/WEB-INF/struts-config.xml</param-value>
  </init-param>
  <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
 <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
 <url-pattern>*.do</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Here we have mapped url *.do with the ActionServlet, hence all the requests from *.do url will be routed to ActionServlet; which will handle the flow of Struts after that. We will create package strutcures for your project source. Here we will create two packages, one for Action classes (net.viralpatel.struts.helloworld.action) and other for Form beans(net.viralpatel.struts.helloworld.action).

Also create a class LoginForm in net.viralpatel.struts.helloworld.action with following content. [ad#blogs_content_inbetween]

package net.viralpatel.struts.helloworld.form;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionErrors;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionMapping;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionMessage;

public class LoginForm extends ActionForm {

 private String userName;
 private String password;
 
 public ActionErrors validate(ActionMapping mapping,
   HttpServletRequest request) {
 
  ActionErrors actionErrors = new ActionErrors();
  
  if(userName == null || userName.trim().equals("")) {
   actionErrors.add("userName", new ActionMessage("error.username"));
  }
  try {
  if(password == null || password.trim().equals("")) {
   actionErrors.add("password", new ActionMessage("error.password"));
  }
  }catch(Exception e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  }
  return actionErrors ;
 }
 
 public String getUserName() {
  return userName;
 }
 public void setUserName(String userName) {
  this.userName = userName;
 }
 public String getPassword() {
  return password;
 }
 public void setPassword(String password) {
  this.password = password;
 }
}
Code language: Java (java)

LoginForm is a bean class which extends ActionForm class of struts framework. This class will have the string properties like userName and password and their getter and setter methods. This class will act as a bean and will help in carrying values too and fro from JSP to Action class. Let us create an Action class that will handle the request and will process the authentication. Create a class named LoginAction in net.viralpatel.struts.helloworld.action package. Copy paste following code in LoginAction class.

package net.viralpatel.struts.helloworld.action;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import net.viralpatel.struts.helloworld.form.LoginForm;

import org.apache.struts.action.Action;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForward;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionMapping;

public class LoginAction extends Action {

 public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping, ActionForm form,
   HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
   throws Exception {
 
  String target = null;
  LoginForm loginForm = (LoginForm)form; 
      
  if(loginForm.getUserName().equals("admin")
    && loginForm.getPassword().equals("admin123")) {
   target = "success";
   request.setAttribute("message", loginForm.getPassword());
  }
  else {
   target = "failure";
  }
  
  return mapping.findForward(target);
 }
}
Code language: Java (java)

In action class, we have a method called execute() which will be called by struts framework when this action will gets called. The parameter passed to this method are ActionMapping, ActionForm, HttpServletRequest and HttpServletResponse. In execute() method we check if username equals admin and password is equal to admin123, user will be redirected to Welcome page. If username and password are not proper, then user will be redirected to login page again. We will use the internationalization (i18n) support of struts to display text on our pages. Hence we will create a MessagesResources properties file which will contain all our text data. Create a folder resource under src (Right click on src and select New -> Source Folder). Now create a text file called MessageResource.properties under resources folder.

Copy the following content in your Upadate:struts-config.xml MessageResource.properties file. [ad#blogs_content_inbetween]

label.username = Login Detail
label.password = Password
label.welcome = Welcome

error.username =Username is not entered.
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Create two JSP files, index.jsp and welcome.jsp with the following content in your WebContent folder. index.jsp

<%@taglib uri="http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/tags-html" prefix="html"%>
<%@taglib uri="http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/tags-bean" prefix="bean" %>

<html>
 <head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
  <title>Login page | Hello World Struts application in Eclipse</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <h1>Login</h1>
 <html:form action="login">
   <bean:message key="label.username" />
   <html:text >welcome.jsp</strong>

<!-- wp:code {"language": "html"} --><pre class="wp-block-code"><code></code></pre><!-- /wp:code --><%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
    pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<!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=ISO-8859-1">
  <title>Welcome page | Hello World Struts application in Eclipse</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <%
  String message = (String)request.getAttribute("message");
 %>
  <h1>Welcome <%= message %></h1>
 
 </body>
</html>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Now create a file called struts-config.xml in WEB-INF folder. Also note that in web.xml file we have passed an argument with name config to ActionServlet class with value /WEB-INF/struts-config.xml.

Following will be the content of struts-config.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<!DOCTYPE struts-config PUBLIC
          "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 1.2//EN"
          "http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/dtds/struts-config_1_2.dtd">

<struts-config>
 <form-beans>
  <form-bean name="LoginForm"
   type="net.viralpatel.struts.helloworld.form.LoginForm" />
 </form-beans>


 <global-exceptions>
 </global-exceptions>
 <global-forwards></global-forwards>

 <action-mappings>
  <action path="/login" name="LoginForm" validate="true" input="/index.jsp" 
   type="net.viralpatel.struts.helloworld.action.LoginAction">
   <forward name="success" path="/welcome.jsp" />
   <forward name="failure" path="/index.jsp" />
  </action>
 </action-mappings>

 
 <message-resources parameter="resource.MessageResource"></message-resources>
 
</struts-config>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

[ad#blogs_content_inbetween] And, that’s it :) .. We are done with our application and now its turn to run it. I hope you have already configured Tomcat in eclipse. If not then:

Open Server view from Windows -> Show View -> Server. Right click in this view and select New -> Server and add your server details. To run the project, right click on Project name from Project Explorer and select Run as -> Run on Server (Shortcut: Alt+Shift+X, R)

Login Page

Welcome Page

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View Comments

Aditi says:

December 4, 2008 at 7:14 pm

Thanks Viral,
The explanation and information is very apt.
Very useful.
Veera says:

December 4, 2008 at 9:01 pm

Informative post.

Here's a similar tutorial, but for the latest version of struts 2 - Create Struts 2 - Hello World Application
Zviki says:

December 5, 2008 at 2:14 am

If you're (still) doing Struts, you should check out Oracle Workshop for WebLogic. It is the best Struts tool by far, includes many examples and can do much much more than Eclipse WTP. It is not WebLogic specific. And, it's free.

Check out my post about it:
http://blog.zvikico.com/2008/08/the-best-jspstrutsjsf-development-tool-is-now-free.html
Viral Patel says:

December 5, 2008 at 11:45 am

@Veera : Nice to see your Struts-2 tutorial. You will see more tutorials on similar line here on viralpatel.net

@Zviki : Thanks for your comment. Will definitely check Oracle Workshop for WebLogic.
tabrez says:

December 9, 2008 at 2:42 pm

Nice tutorial, good job :)

@Zviki I suggest having a look at IntelliJ IDEA's support for Struts 2, in my opinion it is one of the best. It's not free, though.
chn says:

December 15, 2008 at 9:38 pm

hi did anyone try this with WASCE server? iam doing in it and evrything looks fine except that when i clikc on submit it says that the resource/login is not found..

any ideas pls help
kingshri says:

December 25, 2008 at 1:54 pm

I am getting this exception while deploying this .... Can anyone help?

HTTP Status 500 -

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

type Exception report

message

description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: Cannot find ActionMappings or ActionFormBeans collection
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.handleJspException(JspServletWrapper.java:460)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:355)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:329)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:265)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)

root cause

javax.servlet.ServletException: Cannot find ActionMappings or ActionFormBeans collection
org.apache.jasper.runtime.PageContextImpl.doHandlePageException(PageContextImpl.java:841)
org.apache.jasper.runtime.PageContextImpl.handlePageException(PageContextImpl.java:774)
org.apache.jsp.index_jsp._jspService(index_jsp.java:91)
org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:98)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:331)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:329)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:265)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)

root cause

javax.servlet.jsp.JspException: Cannot find ActionMappings or ActionFormBeans collection
org.apache.struts.taglib.html.FormTag.lookup(FormTag.java:798)
org.apache.struts.taglib.html.FormTag.doStartTag(FormTag.java:506)
org.apache.jsp.index_jsp._jspx_meth_html_005fform_005f0(index_jsp.java:107)
org.apache.jsp.index_jsp._jspService(index_jsp.java:81)
org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:98)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:331)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:329)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:265)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
teena says:

December 30, 2008 at 5:41 pm

its very useful for beginners
mayank says:

January 7, 2009 at 6:14 pm

i am getting this exception ..

HTTP Status 500 -

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

type Exception report

message

description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: An exception occurred processing JSP page /index.jsp at line 12

9:
10: Login
11:
12:
13:
14:
15:

Stacktrace:
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.handleJspException(JspServletWrapper.java:524)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:417)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:320)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:266)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)

root cause

javax.servlet.ServletException: javax.servlet.jsp.JspException: Missing message for key "label.username"
org.apache.jasper.runtime.PageContextImpl.doHandlePageException(PageContextImpl.java:850)
org.apache.jasper.runtime.PageContextImpl.handlePageException(PageContextImpl.java:779)
org.apache.jsp.index_jsp._jspService(index_jsp.java:96)
org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:70)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:393)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:320)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:266)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)

root cause

javax.servlet.jsp.JspException: Missing message for key "label.username"
org.apache.struts.taglib.bean.MessageTag.doStartTag(MessageTag.java:233)
org.apache.jsp.index_jsp._jspx_meth_bean_005fmessage_005f0(index_jsp.java:174)
org.apache.jsp.index_jsp._jspx_meth_html_005fform_005f0(index_jsp.java:118)
org.apache.jsp.index_jsp._jspService(index_jsp.java:86)
org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:70)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:393)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:320)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:266)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)

note The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the Apache Tomcat/6.0.14 logs.

many thanks
mayank
Vivek says:

January 19, 2009 at 11:24 am

Copy the following content in your struts-config.xml file.

label.username = Login Detail
label.password = Password
label.welcome = Welcome
error.username =Username is not entered.

did u mean that paste the above content in MessageResource.properties file? or struts-config.xml file?

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