You are viewing a plain text version of this content. The canonical link for it is here.
Posted to dev@struts.apache.org by Phase Web and Multimedia <ma...@phase.ws> on 2002/04/25 21:25:10 UTC
Struts (MVC) Shortcomings?
I am throwing this post out there in the hopes that it will either spawn a
solid answer or at least discussion towards addressing these issues that I
am facing with MVC/Struts. So, here I go...
It is an issue I think is kind of addressed with Plugins but gives no inline
processing options.
The issue becomes one of preparing data for the view without having to write
an Action Class for every possible page someone might view. For example I
have a shopping cart and I have dynamic content that is produced seperate
from the shopping cart. The dynamic content shows up side by side with the
shopping cart content. I would have to produce an Action class for that
particular scenario in order to prepare data for the shopping cart and the
dynamic content.
Wouldn't it be easier if there were a way to allow inline processing, like
an internal struts filter, that could be configured in an xml file and would
pass the request through a processing that could prepare different data
combinations without having to hardcode everything.
So in my afformentioned scenario I would pass the request through some
filtering process (I imagine it would be an interface) that is predefined in
an xml doc and then provide the data to the page for display. For many cases
I wouldn't have to touch the action class. Conditional info can be contained
within the filters (a login bean of sorts). The advantage of doing this over
using Filters (2.3/1.2) is that you can configure it within struts on
specific Action Classes or maybe url patterns and define the order of
processing in an xml doc.
So then you could produce a custom action class and assign common processing
to the Action class without having to touch a stitch of code or use a
generic class and give it common processing requirements. I know this is
probably an oversimplification. But, it doesn't seem entirely impossible. I
would be willing to work on this if I though it would be possible to have it
included into struts in the future. Also, if someone is doing this already.
I would love to get my grubby fingers on it.
Brandon Goodin
Phase Web and Multimedia
P (406) 862-2245
F (406) 862-0354
mail@phase.ws
http://www.phase.ws
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
RE: Struts (MVC) Shortcomings?
Posted by Phase Web and Multimedia <ma...@phase.ws>.
Sorry about the misspellings and unclear descriptions. I was in a hurry. I
hope you get the jist of what I am saying.
Brandon Goodin
Phase Web and Multimedia
P (406) 862-2245
F (406) 862-0354
mail@phase.ws
http://www.phase.ws
-----Original Message-----
From: Phase Web and Multimedia [mailto:mail@phase.ws]
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 1:25 PM
To: Struts Dev; Struts User
Subject: Struts (MVC) Shortcomings?
I am throwing this post out there in the hopes that it will either spawn a
solid answer or at least discussion towards addressing these issues that I
am facing with MVC/Struts. So, here I go...
It is an issue I think is kind of addressed with Plugins but gives no inline
processing options.
The issue becomes one of preparing data for the view without having to write
an Action Class for every possible page someone might view. For example I
have a shopping cart and I have dynamic content that is produced seperate
from the shopping cart. The dynamic content shows up side by side with the
shopping cart content. I would have to produce an Action class for that
particular scenario in order to prepare data for the shopping cart and the
dynamic content.
Wouldn't it be easier if there were a way to allow inline processing, like
an internal struts filter, that could be configured in an xml file and would
pass the request through a processing that could prepare different data
combinations without having to hardcode everything.
So in my afformentioned scenario I would pass the request through some
filtering process (I imagine it would be an interface) that is predefined in
an xml doc and then provide the data to the page for display. For many cases
I wouldn't have to touch the action class. Conditional info can be contained
within the filters (a login bean of sorts). The advantage of doing this over
using Filters (2.3/1.2) is that you can configure it within struts on
specific Action Classes or maybe url patterns and define the order of
processing in an xml doc.
So then you could produce a custom action class and assign common processing
to the Action class without having to touch a stitch of code or use a
generic class and give it common processing requirements. I know this is
probably an oversimplification. But, it doesn't seem entirely impossible. I
would be willing to work on this if I though it would be possible to have it
included into struts in the future. Also, if someone is doing this already.
I would love to get my grubby fingers on it.
Brandon Goodin
Phase Web and Multimedia
P (406) 862-2245
F (406) 862-0354
mail@phase.ws
http://www.phase.ws
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
<ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail:
<ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
Struts Improvement Proposal: Logic Extensibility
Posted by Phase Web and Multimedia <ma...@phase.ws>.
Okay here is the idea I proposed earlier ("Struts (MVC) Shortcomings?") in
more solid thought.
My hope in this is to provide an non-hard-coding mechanism to take advantage
of reusable logic without having to forward around to a bunch of Action
classes (which doesn't work anyways).
Here is my proposal:
An action mapping could have an associated Process Config specified in the
<set-property> of the action class. Something like:
<set-property name="processor" value="processa" />
An associated config file called processor.xml could be set up to define
process patterns that have names associated with the value attribute of the
set-property. Something like:
<processor>
<process-group name="processa">
<process-action name="com.mydomain.ProcessThisA">
<process-action name="com.mydomain.ProcessThisB">
</process-group>
<process-groupname="processb">
<process-action name="com.mydomain.ProcessThisB">
<process-action name="com.mydomain.ProcessThisC">
</process-group>
<process-groupname="processd">
<process-action name="com.mydomain.ProcessThisX">
<process-action name="com.mydomain.ProcessThisC">
<process-action name="com.mydomain.ProcessThisN">
</process-group>
</processor>
This config info could be placed into the Application Scope at the app
startup using the plugin mechanism of Struts 1.1.
When an Action is called it would look to see what "process group" it needs
to call and using reflection to perform the specified chain of processing in
the order specified in the process-groupname config.
A process class would conform to an interface and would have access to
everything that the Action has access to. This way any errors or scoped
beans/Attributes that need to be set can be set from within the process
class. Also, the process class could access other logic beans for sql and
such.
Any unique coding that needs to happen can still be contained in an Action
class. But for code that is reusable. This would be very nice.
Brandon Goodin
Phase Web and Multimedia
P (406) 862-2245
F (406) 862-0354
mail@phase.ws
http://www.phase.ws
-----Original Message-----
From: Phase Web and Multimedia [mailto:mail@phase.ws]
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 1:25 PM
To: Struts Dev; Struts User
Subject: Struts (MVC) Shortcomings?
I am throwing this post out there in the hopes that it will either spawn a
solid answer or at least discussion towards addressing these issues that I
am facing with MVC/Struts. So, here I go...
It is an issue I think is kind of addressed with Plugins but gives no inline
processing options.
The issue becomes one of preparing data for the view without having to write
an Action Class for every possible page someone might view. For example I
have a shopping cart and I have dynamic content that is produced seperate
from the shopping cart. The dynamic content shows up side by side with the
shopping cart content. I would have to produce an Action class for that
particular scenario in order to prepare data for the shopping cart and the
dynamic content.
Wouldn't it be easier if there were a way to allow inline processing, like
an internal struts filter, that could be configured in an xml file and would
pass the request through a processing that could prepare different data
combinations without having to hardcode everything.
So in my afformentioned scenario I would pass the request through some
filtering process (I imagine it would be an interface) that is predefined in
an xml doc and then provide the data to the page for display. For many cases
I wouldn't have to touch the action class. Conditional info can be contained
within the filters (a login bean of sorts). The advantage of doing this over
using Filters (2.3/1.2) is that you can configure it within struts on
specific Action Classes or maybe url patterns and define the order of
processing in an xml doc.
So then you could produce a custom action class and assign common processing
to the Action class without having to touch a stitch of code or use a
generic class and give it common processing requirements. I know this is
probably an oversimplification. But, it doesn't seem entirely impossible. I
would be willing to work on this if I though it would be possible to have it
included into struts in the future. Also, if someone is doing this already.
I would love to get my grubby fingers on it.
Brandon Goodin
Phase Web and Multimedia
P (406) 862-2245
F (406) 862-0354
mail@phase.ws
http://www.phase.ws
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
<ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail:
<ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
RE: Struts (MVC) Shortcomings?
Posted by Phase Web and Multimedia <ma...@phase.ws>.
Sorry about the misspellings and unclear descriptions. I was in a hurry. I
hope you get the jist of what I am saying.
Brandon Goodin
Phase Web and Multimedia
P (406) 862-2245
F (406) 862-0354
mail@phase.ws
http://www.phase.ws
-----Original Message-----
From: Phase Web and Multimedia [mailto:mail@phase.ws]
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 1:25 PM
To: Struts Dev; Struts User
Subject: Struts (MVC) Shortcomings?
I am throwing this post out there in the hopes that it will either spawn a
solid answer or at least discussion towards addressing these issues that I
am facing with MVC/Struts. So, here I go...
It is an issue I think is kind of addressed with Plugins but gives no inline
processing options.
The issue becomes one of preparing data for the view without having to write
an Action Class for every possible page someone might view. For example I
have a shopping cart and I have dynamic content that is produced seperate
from the shopping cart. The dynamic content shows up side by side with the
shopping cart content. I would have to produce an Action class for that
particular scenario in order to prepare data for the shopping cart and the
dynamic content.
Wouldn't it be easier if there were a way to allow inline processing, like
an internal struts filter, that could be configured in an xml file and would
pass the request through a processing that could prepare different data
combinations without having to hardcode everything.
So in my afformentioned scenario I would pass the request through some
filtering process (I imagine it would be an interface) that is predefined in
an xml doc and then provide the data to the page for display. For many cases
I wouldn't have to touch the action class. Conditional info can be contained
within the filters (a login bean of sorts). The advantage of doing this over
using Filters (2.3/1.2) is that you can configure it within struts on
specific Action Classes or maybe url patterns and define the order of
processing in an xml doc.
So then you could produce a custom action class and assign common processing
to the Action class without having to touch a stitch of code or use a
generic class and give it common processing requirements. I know this is
probably an oversimplification. But, it doesn't seem entirely impossible. I
would be willing to work on this if I though it would be possible to have it
included into struts in the future. Also, if someone is doing this already.
I would love to get my grubby fingers on it.
Brandon Goodin
Phase Web and Multimedia
P (406) 862-2245
F (406) 862-0354
mail@phase.ws
http://www.phase.ws
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
<ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail:
<ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>