Most use cases can be divided into two phases. First, we need to change or query the application's state, and then we need to present an updated view of the application. The Action class manages the application's state, and the Result Type manages the view.
Predefined Result Types
The framework provides several implementations of the com.opensymphony.xwork2.Result interface, ready to use in your own applications.
| Chain Result | Used for Action Chaining |
| Dispatcher Result | Used for web resource integration, including JSP integration |
| FreeMarker Result | Used for FreeMarker integration |
| HttpHeader Result | Used to control special HTTP behaviors |
| Redirect Result | Used to redirect to another URL (web resource) |
| Redirect Action Result | Used to redirect to another action mapping |
| Stream Result | Used to stream an InputStream back to the browser (usually for file downloads) |
| Velocity Result | Used for Velocity integration |
| XSL Result | Used for XML/XSLT integration |
| PlainText Result | Used to display the raw content of a particular page (i.e jsp, HTML) |
| Tiles Result | Used to provide Tiles integration |
Optional
| JasperReports Plugin | Used for JasperReports Tutorial integration | Optional, third-party plugin |
Additional Result Types can be created and plugged into an application by implementing the com.opensymphony.xwork2.Result interface. Custom Result Types might include generating an email or JMS message, generating images, and so forth.
Default Parameters
To minimize configuration, Results can be configured with a single value, which will be converted into a parameter, and each Result can specify which parameter this value should be set as. For example, here is a result defined in XML that uses a default parameter:
<result type="freemarker">foo.fm</result>
That is the equivalent to this:
<result type="freemarker"> <param name="location">foo.vm</param> </result>
Since probably 95% of your actions won't need results that contain multiple parameters, this little shortcut saves you a significant amount of configuration. It also follows that if you have specified the default parameter, you don't need to set the same parameter as a specifically-named parameter.
Registering Result Types
All Result Types are plugged in via the Result Configuration.