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Posted to user@struts.apache.org by David Erickson <de...@cmcflex.com> on 2004/06/23 05:18:33 UTC
New Validating system instructions?
Just wondering if there are any docs up on how the validator works in the
new nightly builds of struts... trying to transition everything to using
ActionMessages and storing the errors/messages under different keys within
that object, just wondering how to do that using the validator.xml plugin.
Thanks,
David
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Re: New Validating system instructions?
Posted by David Erickson <de...@cmcflex.com>.
Joe,
There have been some subtle changes especially within the Validator, for
example the xml you no longer specify arg0-arg3, you specify an arg then
give it a position attribute to change message key info for display.
A couple things I've had to do that seem pretty tedious and could likely be
a target of some good refactoring. I've done previous development where I
stored all errors in an ActionErrors object under its default key in the
session, however having to put html code into my properties file was not
something I wanted to do on my new app. So what I do now is store
everything in ActionMessages, and I store messags/errors under different
property values within that object. So when I go to display errors my jsps
look something like:
<logic-el:messagesPresent message="true" property="GLOBAL_ERROR">
<h4 class="Red">Errors:</h4>
<ul style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;">
<html-el:messages id="error" message="true" property="GLOBAL_ERROR">
<li><c:out value="${error}"/>
</html-el:messages>
</ul>
</logic-el:messagesPresent>
or GLOBAL_MESSAGE for messages. However this was a significant challenge to
accomplish. Since the commons-validator seems to store errors under random
properties within the ActionErrors object I needed to put this into my
validate method of ValidatorActionForm:
ActionErrors validatorErrors = super.validate(mapping, request);
ActionErrors errors = new ActionErrors();
if (validatorErrors != null) {
for (Iterator i = validatorErrors.get(); i.hasNext();) {
ActionMessage message = (ActionMessage)i.next();
errors.add(Globals.GLOBAL_ERROR, message);
}
}
Note my use of Globals.GLOBAL_ERROR is my own set of Globals within the app.
Is there somewhere I can specifically tell commons-validator what property
to store errors it finds under? I couldnt find it but it may exist.
Secondly I did have to overwrite the processValidate method of my request
processor to store the results of the validate() method into session scope
under the Messages key instead of Errors.
Quite a bit of work just to get messages to show up it seems :)
Thoughts/Comments?
Oh and on a sort of related rant, within the xml commons validator why in
the world can you not substitute in runtime values? IE if I am validating
an email address I want to do something like:
{0} is not a valid email address
and within that {0} substitute in the value the user submitted, all within
the xml.
So something like
<arg value="emailAddress" position="0" runTimeValue="true"/>
-David
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Germuska" <Jo...@Germuska.com>
To: "Struts Users Mailing List" <us...@struts.apache.org>; "Struts Mailing
List" <st...@jakarta.apache.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 7:49 AM
Subject: Re: New Validating system instructions?
> At 9:18 PM -0600 6/22/04, David Erickson wrote:
> >Just wondering if there are any docs up on how the validator works in the
> >new nightly builds of struts... trying to transition everything to using
> >ActionMessages and storing the errors/messages under different keys
within
> >that object, just wondering how to do that using the validator.xml
plugin.
> >Thanks,
> >David
>
> The way in which validator integrates with Struts has not changed.
> Validation errors are still "errors" and are still stored in request
> scope using the key org.apache.struts.Globals.ERROR_KEY (which has
> the literal value "org.apache.struts.action.ERROR") This is the
> default location where the html:errors and html:messages tags both
> look for an ActionMessages object.
>
> More generally: the difference between the classes
> ActionErrors/ActionError/ActionMessages/ActionMessage has *absolutely
> nothing* to do with the difference in behavior in
> Action.saveErrors(...) and Action.saveMessages(...)
>
> The difference between the classes is zero -- all behavior in
> ActionErrors was pushed up into ActionMessages and all behavior in
> ActionError was pushed up into ActionMessage. This was done in the
> attempt to clearly signal that these classes can be used to pass any
> kind of messages from the controller to the view -- errors being only
> one kind of message.
>
> The difference between saveErrors(...) and saveMessages(...) is
> simply the attribute name under which the ActionMessages object is
> stored, providing two convenient default locations for storing
> controller messages for use by the view. If you look more closely at
> the html:errors and html:messages tags, you can actually use them to
> get an ActionMessages object from any arbitrary attribute name in any
> scope.
>
> While we're clarifying, the difference between html:errors and
> html:messages is purely in syntax and model -- both tags *default* to
> look for an ActionMessages object under Globals.ERROR_KEY despite the
> difference in names. I wasn't part of the history, but I'm assuming
> that around the same time that people were realizing that there's
> more than one kind of message to pass, they also realized that
> sometimes you want more flexibility in displaying them.
> html:messages provides more flexibility at the cost of more typing.
>
> I hope this helps to clarify things. I would strongly encourage
> people to have a look inside the Struts source code, as it's really
> quite clear when you look under the hood. You can see what happens
> in validation by examining the "processValidate" method in
> RequestProcessor:
>
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-struts/src/share/org/apache/struts/action/RequestProcessor.java?view=markup
>
> You can see what happens with saveErrors and saveMessages by
> examining those methods in Action
>
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-struts/src/share/org/apache/struts/action/Action.java?view=markup
>
> You can see what the tags do by looking at their respective source files:
>
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-struts/src/share/org/apache/struts/taglib/html/MessagesTag.java?view=markup
>
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-struts/src/share/org/apache/struts/taglib/html/ErrorsTag.java?view=markup
>
> I'll put most of this text in the Struts Wiki at
> http://wiki.apache.org/struts/ActionErrorsAndActionMessages Anyone
> who wants to clarify is encouraged to document it there, and, of
> course, if you see a place in the core struts docs that could make
> this more clear, we welcome documentation contributions as much as
> code contributions.
>
> Joe
> --
> Joe Germuska
> Joe@Germuska.com
> http://blog.germuska.com
> "In fact, when I die, if I don't hear 'A Love Supreme,' I'll turn
> back; I'll know I'm in the wrong place."
> - Carlos Santana
>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: user-unsubscribe@struts.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: user-help@struts.apache.org
>
>
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Re: New Validating system instructions?
Posted by Joe Germuska <Jo...@Germuska.com>.
At 9:18 PM -0600 6/22/04, David Erickson wrote:
>Just wondering if there are any docs up on how the validator works in the
>new nightly builds of struts... trying to transition everything to using
>ActionMessages and storing the errors/messages under different keys within
>that object, just wondering how to do that using the validator.xml plugin.
>Thanks,
>David
The way in which validator integrates with Struts has not changed.
Validation errors are still "errors" and are still stored in request
scope using the key org.apache.struts.Globals.ERROR_KEY (which has
the literal value "org.apache.struts.action.ERROR") This is the
default location where the html:errors and html:messages tags both
look for an ActionMessages object.
More generally: the difference between the classes
ActionErrors/ActionError/ActionMessages/ActionMessage has *absolutely
nothing* to do with the difference in behavior in
Action.saveErrors(...) and Action.saveMessages(...)
The difference between the classes is zero -- all behavior in
ActionErrors was pushed up into ActionMessages and all behavior in
ActionError was pushed up into ActionMessage. This was done in the
attempt to clearly signal that these classes can be used to pass any
kind of messages from the controller to the view -- errors being only
one kind of message.
The difference between saveErrors(...) and saveMessages(...) is
simply the attribute name under which the ActionMessages object is
stored, providing two convenient default locations for storing
controller messages for use by the view. If you look more closely at
the html:errors and html:messages tags, you can actually use them to
get an ActionMessages object from any arbitrary attribute name in any
scope.
While we're clarifying, the difference between html:errors and
html:messages is purely in syntax and model -- both tags *default* to
look for an ActionMessages object under Globals.ERROR_KEY despite the
difference in names. I wasn't part of the history, but I'm assuming
that around the same time that people were realizing that there's
more than one kind of message to pass, they also realized that
sometimes you want more flexibility in displaying them.
html:messages provides more flexibility at the cost of more typing.
I hope this helps to clarify things. I would strongly encourage
people to have a look inside the Struts source code, as it's really
quite clear when you look under the hood. You can see what happens
in validation by examining the "processValidate" method in
RequestProcessor:
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-struts/src/share/org/apache/struts/action/RequestProcessor.java?view=markup
You can see what happens with saveErrors and saveMessages by
examining those methods in Action
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-struts/src/share/org/apache/struts/action/Action.java?view=markup
You can see what the tags do by looking at their respective source files:
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-struts/src/share/org/apache/struts/taglib/html/MessagesTag.java?view=markup
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-struts/src/share/org/apache/struts/taglib/html/ErrorsTag.java?view=markup
I'll put most of this text in the Struts Wiki at
http://wiki.apache.org/struts/ActionErrorsAndActionMessages Anyone
who wants to clarify is encouraged to document it there, and, of
course, if you see a place in the core struts docs that could make
this more clear, we welcome documentation contributions as much as
code contributions.
Joe
--
Joe Germuska
Joe@Germuska.com
http://blog.germuska.com
"In fact, when I die, if I don't hear 'A Love Supreme,' I'll turn
back; I'll know I'm in the wrong place."
- Carlos Santana
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