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Jakarta Struts Training Course

Jakarta Struts is a framework facilitating the development of web-applications, based on the Model 2 approach, a variation of the classic Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. The Struts framework provides a highly-configurable Controller component, integrating with other technologies (JDBC, EJBs, JSP, etc) to provide the Model and View.

The Struts Training Course is designed to introduce the student to the world of Struts-based web applications. It is a combination of both theory and practice, starting with a broad overview of web applications, and culminating in the development of a basic framework which the student can take away and adapt to their own needs.

Throughout the course, we use the attendees experiences, perhaps a project they are currently involved in, to develop some real-world solutions to real-world problems. The layout of the course itself is flexible - our aim is to have students capable of starting work immediately on a Struts-based project. To accomplish this goal, as well as teaching the theory, we also place great emphasis on real examples, learnt from our own extensive development experiences.

We begin by introducing web applications in general, and java-based web applications in particular. To begin on the first day, we look at the structure of web applications, installing and configuring the Tomcat servlet engine, and developing a simple example. We move on to further exploring servlets and JSPs, and introducing custom-tag development.

For the next three days, we work through each facet of a Struts-based application. We teach the constituent parts of the application, outlining the separate model, view and controller objects. We go through the configuration of a Struts application in depth, which is often the place developers struggle with most. The different problems that may arise in a Struts application are introduced, such as designing the application, putting a development project together, or deploying to the application server. We also develop examples using most of the Struts Tag Library, for which little practical examples are generally available.

Our aim is to have every student walking away at the end of our course, having learnt enough to skip the first 4-8 weeks ramp-up required in any, and particularly a Struts-based, development project using new techonlogies. In parallel, they will have gained a greater understanding of the architecture of web-application and other development projects, becoming better overall developers as a result.


Struts Training Course - Part 1
Introduction and Overview
Why would you use servlets and JSPs?
Structure of a web application
Example web application
Struts Training Course - Part 5
ActionForm - subclassing them
Actions - and why to subclass them with your own
The Struts lifecycle
Moving data between actions
Designing an application
Struts Training Course - Part 2
JavaBeans and JSP
What is a JavaBean
Use of Beans in JSPs
Configuration - web.xml, struts-config.xml and TLDs
The JSP tag lifecycle
Custom JSP tags
Struts Training Course - Part 6
Advanced Struts
Use of Tokens
Accessing Indexed Properties
Forward vs Redirect
Secure Pages
Dynamically Creating Action Forwards
Navigation
Re-use of Actions and Forms
Struts Training Course - Part 3
Model 1 architecture, and why not!
The Model / View / Controller (MVC) pattern, and why!
Simulated MVC with Servlets JSP
Application Flow
Struts Training Course - Part 7
Custom Tag Library Development
The Anatomy and Life Cycle of a Custom Tag
Developing Custom Tags
Extending the functionality of the Struts Tag Library
Overview of STL tag library
Reading the Struts source code
Struts Training Course - Part 4
Struts Overview
Controller servlet
Action Objects
Form Objects
Action Mappings
Struts View Components
Struts Tags
Struts Training Course - Part 8
Testing Struts Applications
Overview of Junit, HttpUnit, Cactus and StrutsUnit
Deploying Struts applications
Overview of Ant and Tomcat
Starting and developing a Struts Project