Struts EL tag library stability

[Martin Shiveral <ma...@hotmail.com>]

The purpose of this email is to try and get an idea of the number of users 
in the struts community currently using the Struts EL tag library and 
determine if the library is a sensible candidate for use (i.e. whether it 
will become a fully fledged part of the core Struts tag library as opposed 
to a contribution and what the level of developer support is likely to be).

The Struts EL tag library (see http://struts.apache.org/faqs/struts-el.html) 
is an extension of the Struts tag library that supports expression language 
attribute values instead of the conventional runtime-expression values. This 
tag functionalty would prove useful for the project I am involved with but 
there is not a great deal of Struts-EL documentation available online. The 
Struts 1.1 source download does contain some doumentation but I find it a 
worrying sign that the API for these tags is not available online (to my 
knowledge).

For the most part we wish to take tags that generate standard HTML elements 
(button, text, textarea etc.) that support EL attribute values and customise 
them by wrapping additional elements around the underlying functionality. I 
have also read in numerous places (most notably the Jakarta Taglib Developer 
Guideline) that "user code should avoid calling a setter method of a tag 
handler for properties that correspond to tag attributes". The Struts-EL 
taglib source seems to break this rule by calling setter methods from within 
the "evaluateExpressions() private method of each tag, which makes me 
slightly wary of them.

Has anyone else extended these tags or encountered any problems with them?

Best Regards,
Martin

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Re: Struts EL tag library stability

[Martin Cooper <mf...@gmail.com>]

Since you're looking for an indication of the level of adoption of
these taglibs by the Struts community, I would suggest asking the
question of the Struts user community itself, rather than the Taglibs
developer community. ;-)

If you send a message to user@struts.apache.org, I have no doubt that
you will get numerous responses from people who use these tags, as
well as the people who work on them. They are widely used, and will
soon be a "peer" of the original Struts taglibs, rather than living in
the 'contrib' folder.

That said, there are many tags in the Struts taglibs for which the
equivalent functionality is now available in JSTL, and we (I'm
speaking with my Struts hat on here ;) are encouraging people to move
to the standard tags where they can, for the simple reason that those
are standard, and optimised implementations within the container are
possible.

Regarding your question about invoking setters, yes, the EL tags do
this, but it's actually not an issue in this case. It's a consequence
of the EL tags being built on top of the non-EL tags. The EL tags were
carefully designed and constructed, and I'm not aware of any issues
with them. If you look at the Struts bug database, you will find only
one (very recent) bug report against the tags which is not an
enhancement request.

Hope this helps.

--
Martin Cooper


On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 14:52:53 +0000, Martin Shiveral
<ma...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> The purpose of this email is to try and get an idea of the number of users
> in the struts community currently using the Struts EL tag library and
> determine if the library is a sensible candidate for use (i.e. whether it
> will become a fully fledged part of the core Struts tag library as opposed
> to a contribution and what the level of developer support is likely to be).
> 
> The Struts EL tag library (see http://struts.apache.org/faqs/struts-el.html)
> is an extension of the Struts tag library that supports expression language
> attribute values instead of the conventional runtime-expression values. This
> tag functionalty would prove useful for the project I am involved with but
> there is not a great deal of Struts-EL documentation available online. The
> Struts 1.1 source download does contain some doumentation but I find it a
> worrying sign that the API for these tags is not available online (to my
> knowledge).
> 
> For the most part we wish to take tags that generate standard HTML elements
> (button, text, textarea etc.) that support EL attribute values and customise
> them by wrapping additional elements around the underlying functionality. I
> have also read in numerous places (most notably the Jakarta Taglib Developer
> Guideline) that "user code should avoid calling a setter method of a tag
> handler for properties that correspond to tag attributes". The Struts-EL
> taglib source seems to break this rule by calling setter methods from within
> the "evaluateExpressions() private method of each tag, which makes me
> slightly wary of them.
> 
> Has anyone else extended these tags or encountered any problems with them?
> 
> Best Regards,
> Martin
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> Use MSN Messenger to send music and pics to your friends
> http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger
> 
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: taglibs-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: taglibs-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
> 
>

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