Request parameters not making it to Actions?

[fz...@omnytex.com]

Hello all... I've got a strange situation that's been bugging me for a while.  First, some quick background:

I wrote an application about two years ago that was based on a proprietary framework that has now been converted to Struts.  One of the things this proprietary framework was missing was the concept of ActionForms.  Instead, when you hit your controller classes, you dealt with the Request object directly to get your parameters.

Since as usual I had to get the conversion done in far less time than it should have been done in, I basically would up not really using ActionForms except to transfer data back to the view.  In other words, no validation is don in the ActionForms, and they are not auto-populateed by Struts.  My Actions still deal directly with Request, I just populate the ActionForm on the way out to the JSP (I intended to use the ActionForms more "properly" later, but that time has never presented itself).

So, now I come to the issue... It seems that every now and again (average of about 25 times per 50,000 transaction) I get NPE's in my Actions and they are always because some value that was expected to be in Request is null.

Now, the front-end does a bunch of validation (JavaScript) and I've gone over it a ton of times and there doesn't seem to be any way a user could submit a form without filling in required elements (and most of them should be blanks anyway, not nulls).  I thought about maybe they were using the Back button in some crazy way, but the app opens in a new chromless window, so they would have to be using a keyboard shortcut.  I've tried every crazy thing I could think of to break it, but it never seems to break.  I have NEVER ONCE replicated one of these problems.

So, my question comes down to this... has anyone ever seen a situation where a Struts-based app running on Tomcat (5.0.25 I believe) would "lose" request data, either as a fault of Struts or of Tomcat?  Could it be some Tomcat tuning issue? (I will ask this same question on the Tomcat list, but I wanted to start here first).

Any thoughts would be appreciated.  Fortunately no one is complaining because the app is generally quite stable, but these once-in-a-while exceptions are pissing me off more than anything else!

[OT] Re: Request parameters not making it to Actions?

[Ben Anderson <be...@gmail.com>]

Possibly many of you already have your own approaches for seeing
what's actually transmitted over the wire, but if you don't - check
out the LiveHTTPHeaders extension to Firefox - I love it!

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Re: Request parameters not making it to Actions?

[Craig McClanahan <cr...@gmail.com>]

I don't know if this is happening to you, but one thing to examine
your client side JavaScript code for is setting an input element's
"disabled" property.  If you ever do this, and then submit the form
that contains that element, the browser will *not* include the element
with the request.  In turn, this would have the effect of not setting
that property in your form bean, leading to the types of symptoms you
are observing.

If your UI wants to selectively disable the ability of the user to
change an input field, you should manipulate the "readonly" property
instead.  That's because readonly input elements are still included.

Craig


On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 12:10:42 -0700 (PDT), fzlists@omnytex.com
<fz...@omnytex.com> wrote:
> Hello all... I've got a strange situation that's been bugging me for a while.  First, some quick background:
> 
> I wrote an application about two years ago that was based on a proprietary framework that has now been converted to Struts.  One of the things this proprietary framework was missing was the concept of ActionForms.  Instead, when you hit your controller classes, you dealt with the Request object directly to get your parameters.
> 
> Since as usual I had to get the conversion done in far less time than it should have been done in, I basically would up not really using ActionForms except to transfer data back to the view.  In other words, no validation is don in the ActionForms, and they are not auto-populateed by Struts.  My Actions still deal directly with Request, I just populate the ActionForm on the way out to the JSP (I intended to use the ActionForms more "properly" later, but that time has never presented itself).
> 
> So, now I come to the issue... It seems that every now and again (average of about 25 times per 50,000 transaction) I get NPE's in my Actions and they are always because some value that was expected to be in Request is null.
> 
> Now, the front-end does a bunch of validation (JavaScript) and I've gone over it a ton of times and there doesn't seem to be any way a user could submit a form without filling in required elements (and most of them should be blanks anyway, not nulls).  I thought about maybe they were using the Back button in some crazy way, but the app opens in a new chromless window, so they would have to be using a keyboard shortcut.  I've tried every crazy thing I could think of to break it, but it never seems to break.  I have NEVER ONCE replicated one of these problems.
> 
> So, my question comes down to this... has anyone ever seen a situation where a Struts-based app running on Tomcat (5.0.25 I believe) would "lose" request data, either as a fault of Struts or of Tomcat?  Could it be some Tomcat tuning issue? (I will ask this same question on the Tomcat list, but I wanted to start here first).
> 
> Any thoughts would be appreciated.  Fortunately no one is complaining because the app is generally quite stable, but these once-in-a-while exceptions are pissing me off more than anything else!
> 
> 
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: user-unsubscribe@struts.apache.org
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>

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