This overview collects the contents page for each area of the documentation.

Tutorials

FAQs

Migrating

• See the Migration Guide

General

• Where do we get the latest version the framework?
• What are some of the framework's best features?
• What are the fundamental differences between Struts and JSF?
• Can you suggest an elevator pitch?

HOWTO

• How can we display dynamic or static images that can be provided as an array of bytes?
• How can we return a text string as the response?
• How can we test applications?
• How can we test Actions?
• How do we upload files?
• How do we download files within the framework?
• How can we force the Action Mappings (struts.xml) to reload?
• How can I test my action output, validation or the action execution outside a container?

Configuration

• Can we break up a large struts.xml file into smaller pieces?
• Parameters in configuration results

Accessing Resources

• How do we get access to the session?
• How do we get invalidate the session?
• How can we access the HttpServletRequest?
• How can we access the HttpServletResponse?
• How can we access request parameters passed into an Action?
• How do we access static parameters from an Action?
• Can we access an Action's Result?
• How do I obtain security details (JAAS)?
• How do we access the Action Invocation, action name or namespace from a view

Per-Page Settings

• Can I change theme on a per-page basis?
• Can I change templateDir on a per-page basis?
• Can I change templateSuffix on a per-page basis?

Interceptors

• Why isn't our Prepare interceptor being executed?
• Why does my setter not get called by the params interceptor?
• How do we configure an Interceptor to be used with every Action?

Validation

• Why is my action returning "input" when the form is filled out correctly?
• How do I use messages from within the validator?
• How can I fix the "Attribute 'short-circuit'" error message?
• How do we repopulate controls when validation fails?
• How do I unit test my action's validation logic?
• Why does WW ignore my message when its enclosed in CDATA?

Localization

• How do we change locales?
• How do I set a global resource bundle?
• How do I decouple XWork LocalizedTextUtil global resource bundle loading from serlvets?
• How do I add I18N to a UI tag, like the textfield tag?
• Can I add I18N outside the Action's context?
• How to support UTF-8 URIEncoding with Tomcat?
• How do I enable encoding in my forms?
• How to escape special chars in resource bundles?

Type Conversion

• How do I change the invalid input error message for a particular field?
• Why is the application logging a warning that the Compound Root cannot find a particular Object with a particular property?

Value Stack

• What are the default variables in the value stack?

Tags

• Why do the form tags put table tags around controls?
• How can I put a String literal in a Javascript call, for instance in an onChange attribute?
• Why won't the 'if' tag evaluate a one char string?
• Why does FreeMarker complain that there's an error in my user-directive when I used JSP Tag?
• Can an action tag run another method apart from the default execute method?
• Why didn't my action tag get executed when I have validation errors?
• Why are request parameters appended to our hyperlinks?
• Why doesn't the if tag evaluate test="#parameters.someParam ... " properly
• How do I render a single radio button?
• Why do I get a javax.el.ELException when using OGNL with JSP2.1?
• Why can't I use JSTL-style EL expressions in Struts tags?
• How can I iterate over a range, like with JSTL's forEach tag?

POJOs

• Should the framework call getModel multiple times as a page renders?

Spring

• How can we create our Action objects from the Spring configuration?
• Why would we want to create Action objects from the Spring configuration?

Velocity

• I'm trying to run the example in the tutorial on Tomcat, and it can't instantiate the VelocityEngine

Ajax/Dojo

• IE showing a prompt saying "This page contains both secure and nonsecure items" when using dojo

Issues in Specific Environments

• Weblogic 8.1
• JRockit
• Multiple Struts 2 wars in a single ear
• Google App Engine (GAE)

Extensions

• Does the framework integrate with Hibernate?
• Can we use JSTL with the framework?
• Can we use JUnit with the framework?
• Can we use TestNG with the framework?
• How can we schedule Quartz jobs?
• Can we use Acegi Security with the framework?

Portlet Support(JSR168)

• Which portal servers are supported?
• How to build the portlet WAR for a specific portal server

Migrating

• Why is my action unavailable?

Guides

Our in-depth guides focus on specific areas of the framework, such as Views, the Core framework, and Third-party Extensions.

Core Developers Guide

In processing a request, the framework utilizes three key class types: Actions, Interceptors, and Results, which are configured using one or more XML documents (or Java 5 annotations).

Tutorials - Read me first! Developing Applications with Struts 2 Nutshell AJAX Dependency Injection Profiling Debugging Development Mode Configuration Configuration by Convention Annotations Configuration Elements Actions, Wildcard Mappings, Beans, Constants Exceptions, Includes, Interceptors Namespaces, Packages, Results Unknown Handlers Configuration Files web.xml struts.xml struts.properties struts-default.xml velocity.properties struts-default.vm Application Servers Performance Tuning

Testing Actions (arsenalist) (rosa) Interceptors Writing Interceptors Actions Model Driven Action Chaining Results Result Types DispatcherListener PreResultListener Validation Localization Formatting Dates and Numbers Type Conversion Static Content Portlets Tutorial Configuration/Documentation FAQs Cookbook Javadoc APIs

Tag Developers Guide

The framework offers a flexible view layer that supports multiple view technologies, including JSP, FreeMaker, and Velocity.

Struts Tags Generic Tags UI Tags Themes and Templates Tag Reference Ajax Tags Ajax and JavaScript Recipes OGNL Tag Syntax

JSP specific tags FreeMarker specific tags Velocity specific tags

Plugin Developers Guide

Apache Struts 2 provides a simple plugin architecture so that developers can extend the framework just by adding a JAR to the application's classpath. Since plugins are contained in a JAR, they are easy to share with others. Several plugins are bundled with the framework, and others are available from third-party sources.

• Plugins
• Extending an Application with Custom Plugins

Bundled Plugins

Codebehind Plugin (deprecated) Config Browser Plugin Convention Plugin (2.1.3+) Javatemplates Plugin (2.1.3+) OVal Plugin (2.1.7+) OSGi Plugin (2.1.7+) JSON Plugin (2.1.7+) Embedded JSP Plugin (2.1.7+) JSF Plugin Plexus Plugin Portlet Plugin

DWR Plugin REST Plugin (2.1.1+) SiteGraph Plugin SiteMesh Plugin Spring Plugin Struts 1 Plugin Tiles Plugin JUnit Plugin TestNG Plugin JFreeChart Plugin JasperReports Plugin

For a complete list of bundled and third-party plugins, visit the Plugin Registry..

Architects Guide

• Big Picture
  • ObjectFactory
  • ActionMapper
  • Action Proxy & ActionProxy Factory
  • Configuration Provider & Configuration

Migration Guide

Getting here from there.

Version Notes 2.1.x

• Version Notes 2.1.8
• Version Notes 2.1.6
• Version Notes 2.1.5
• Version Notes 2.1.4
• Version Notes 2.1.3
• Version Notes 2.1.2
• Version Notes 2.1.1
• Version Notes 2.1.0

Release Notes 2.0.x

• Release Notes 2.0.14
• Release Notes 2.0.13
• Release Notes 2.0.12
• Release Notes 2.0.11.2
• Release Notes 2.0.11.1
• Release Notes 2.0.11
• Release Notes 2.0.10
• Release Notes 2.0.9
• Release Notes 2.0.8
• Release Notes 2.0.7
• Release Notes 2.0.6
• Release Notes 2.0.5
• Release Notes 2.0.4
• Release Notes 2.0.3
• Release Notes 2.0.2
• Release Notes 2.0.1
• Release Notes 2.0.0

Struts 1 to Struts 2

Comparing Struts 1 and 2	How are Struts 1 and Struts 2 alike? How are they different?
Struts 1 Solutions	Various issues (and hopefully their solutions!) encountered during migrations to Struts 2.
Migration Strategies	Steps and overall strategies for migrating Struts 1 applications to Struts 2.
Migration Tools	Development tools to help aid the migration process.

Tutorials

Migrating to Struts 2	A three-hour workshop by Ted Husted (Oct 2006)
Migrating Applications to Struts 2	A three-part series by Ian Roughley (Sep 2006)

Roadmap

Roadmap FAQ	What's in store for Struts 2?
A History of Struts 2	Don Brown's summary of events
Struts Reloaded	An archive of the development discussions leading to Struts 2

Webwork 2.2 to Struts 2

Key Changes From WebWork 2	What has been removed or changed from WebWork 2.2 to Struts 2
WebWork 2 Migration Strategies	Steps and overall strategies for migrating WebWork 2 applications to Struts 2.

Contributors Guide

Source

• Building the Framework from Source
  • Building with Maven
• Creating and Signing a Distribution
• Creating and Signing a Struts 2.1.x Distribution
• Creating a XWork Distribution
• Requirements and Use Cases - under construction
• Precise Error Reporting
• Obtaining an IDEA license
• How to Write Doc Comments for the Javadoc Tool (Sun)

Documentation

• Editing the Documentation
• Documentation Colophon
• Documentation Style Guide

Core Guide TODOs

• Creating Resources
• Writing Validators
• Writing Type Converters
• Actions
• Writing Actions
• Writing Results

Tools

• Clean JIRA Comment Spam

Licensing and Copyright

• Third Party Licensing Policy RFC
• ASF Source Header and Copyright Notice Policy
• Author Tags

Errata?

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Next: Tutorials