Re: Using Struts with XML-RPC (or JAXB?) [Scanned for known viruses]

[Ke...@sunlife.com]

Karen -

Following is a re-post from a similar thread about a week ago where I laid
out one potential solution for this problem - assuming I understand your
issue correctly.

Following is a description and some code I used for setting up
communications between Struts and Axis for SOAP communications.

The suammry of this recommendation is:

 - Post to form bean
 - Modify form bean design to allow you to extract a 'value object' from it
(not XML).
 - Create a facade class that 'hides' the communications to the remote
server. Have it accept the 'value object'.
 - Inside the 'facade class' have it create the XML from the value object
and oversee communications
 - The Action class simply takes a valid form bean, extracts a value object
form it and send it through the facade.

In essence, your facade class is a 'model' component that hides any
knowledge of the back end from the Action class and form bean.

There are files below that you can use to see what I'm talking about. Let
me know if you have questions -
Kevin

Kevin


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



I've attached a few files from my upcoming book Struts Kick Start that
provide a basic design pattern that sounds like it may be similar to what
your describing.

What I do is:

 - Create a Value Object that encapsulates data communicated with the Model
component.

 - Create a facade class that accepts and returns value objects through
'business methods'. By defining the facade to work at a 'business method'
level, it helps keep any code related to a particular persistence layer or
back-end system out of the Action class. This also addresses the issues you
described of 'designing to test' - the clean seperation between the Action
class and the Model components that the Facade provides simplifies testing.

 - Create the form bean to provide set/get methods that also accept and
return value objects - this greatly simplifies the Action class and
isolates it from changes.

The Action class (a bit simplified - I've taken out detailed comments and
exception handling) goes something like:

      // cast the form bean
      CustomerForm cf = (CustomerForm) form;

      // Create a facade to interface to the back-end system
      CustomerWSFacade facade = new CustomerWSFacade();

      // Extract the value object from the form bean
      CustomerValueObject cvo = cf.getValueObject();

      // Pass the value object to the facade. It returns an update value object
      cvo = facade.addressChange( cvo );

      // Use the returned value object to update the values in the form bean.
      cf.setValueObject(cvo);

These particular classes come from the chapter on providing integration
with Axis for Web Services. Another chapter uses the identical set of
classes to communicate with JBoss using a Session Bean - all I did was
write a different facade class. The point of this was to demonstrate a
design that made it very simple to perform maintenance or changes on the
back-end or persistence layer.



Regarding testing - I'd recommend you take a look at the StrutsTestCase
project at sourceforge - it provides some great templates for both JUnit
and Cactus tests that are designed for Struts. Makes JUnit/Cactus testing
pretty straightforward. A copy of this and detailed directions also come
with the book.

      http://strutstestcase.sourceforge.net/


Best of luck -
Kevin


Author, Struts Kick Start

(See attached file: customer.zip)








Karen Choi <kc...@yahoo.com> on 10/21/2002 06:41:59 PM

Please respond to "Struts Users Mailing List"
       <st...@jakarta.apache.org>

To:    struts-user@jakarta.apache.org
cc:     (bcc: Kevin Bedell/Systems/USHO/SunLife)
Subject:    Using Struts with XML-RPC (or JAXB?)



I am stuck on a rather vexing Struts problem...

It sounds simple enough. I need to read some values from a form bean, then
parse those values into a valid xml document (must conform to schema I've
been provided with) then send that document to a defined service endpoint
(another servlet).

I know how to do this the "normal" way, but I can't seem to figure out how
to do it with Struts. Would I be able to use JAXB, and create an XML
representation of my form bean, which could be sent to the servlet, or is
there  another approach that I am not aware of.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.



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