Preface

WebWork is a popular, easy-to-use MVC framework.  For more information on the WebWork project, please visit the WebWork Project Home.
This document will help you to get started with WebWork, enabling you to run the examples and demonstrations provided even if you are not an experienced Java web application developer. Nevertheless, WebWork is geared towards developers that have an understanding towards certain technologies. Before diving deeper into how Webwork works, it is recommended that you review the concepts below:

• Java
• Servlets, JSP, and Tag Libraries
• JavaBeans
• HTML and HTTP
• Web Containers (ex. Tomcat)
• XML

Distribution Download and Information Resources

Download Webwork Distribution

You can download the full WebWork distribution here. It contains the webwork.jar file as well as full documentation, sources, all required and optional dependent libraries,and examples. For more information on how to build WebWork from source or even from a clean CVS checkout, please refer to Building Webwork.

Online Information and Project Resources

There are many online sources of information, support and project resources around. Here are links to help you find your way:

• Download Webwork - download Webwork Distribution
• Join the WebWork Forums - The forums are full of active developers, contributors, and power users - often even available for chat. This is the best and quickest way to get a question answered.
• Subscribe to Mailing List or browse Mail Archive or post a question. All posts from the forum are posted to the mailing lists, as well as your posts to the list will make it to the forum.
• CVS - Browse CVS and source at java.net
• Webwork Wiki - Powered by Confluence, the professional J2EE wiki
• Webwork Bugs & Issues - Powered by JIRA:Bug & Issue Traking System
• OpenSymphony Home

Distribution Quickstart

Overview

The distribution contains the following directory layout:

dist/
docs/
lib/
src/
src/java/template/
webapps/
README.txt
build.properties
build.xml
ivy.xml
osbuild.xml
pom.xml
webwork-(VERSION).jar
webwork-(VERSION).zip
webwork-(VERSION)-src.jar

The docs directory contains the current Javadocs, the full user documentation including the document you are reading, and taglib documentation, as well as Clover, JUnit and dependency reports for the build.

The dist directory contains WebWork files with different packaging:

• webwork-nostatic-<version>.jar: containing only WebWork without the static content
• webwork-static-<version>.zip: containing the required WebWork static dependencies

The lib directory contains the required as well as optional Dependencies for Webwork, organized in subdirectories to represent different optional configurations:

lib/
      ajax
      bootstrap
      build
      cewolf
      default
      fileupload
      fileupload-cos
      fileupload-pell
      hibernate
      jasperreports
      jfree
      pico
      plexus
      portlet
      quickstart
      sitemesh
      source
      spring
      tiger
      tiles
      velocity
      xslt

Note that none of the optional packages are required to use Webwork. If you wish to use certain features such as JasperReports or Java 5 (Tiger) generics and annotation support, you must include the optional packages.

Webwork also comes packaged with all the source files and templates for the JSP tags.

Running demos with QuickStart

WebWork provides a quick way to get started called QuickStart. QuickStart is essentially a combination of a few technologies, including the possibility to run web applications such as the provided examples out of the box with a stripped Jetty container.

With that, running the demos is as easy as can be. You just need to call:

java -jar webwork.jar quickstart:<application-name>

from the distribution's top directory, whereby <application-name> is to be replaced by one of the subdirectory names under webapps/, representing the various supplied demo applications. So if you want to start the shopping cart example, just type on your command line:

java -jar webwork.jar quickstart:shopping-cart

After starting an example in that way, you will simply need to point your browser to http://localhost:8080/shopping-cart to view the results.

The packaged examples are:

Read Quickstart documentation to learn more about how it works and how you can utilize it for your own applications.

See below for a more detailed description of how the blank application helps you to easily create your own WebWork-based applications.

Running Demos with Your Favorite Webcontainer

To Quickstart or not to Quickstart? The previous section described the Quickstart mechanism for trying the supplied example webapps, but Quickstart is also a handy tool for development of your own WebWork based applications. We recommend you using the said mechanism unless you are familiar with standalone servlet containers and have good reasons to switch, such as preparing a production system etc.

In order to deploy WebWork applications and demos to your favorite servlet container (also called web container) such as Apache Tomcat or Caucho Resin, you will need to build war files from within the webapps directory. You will find an ant build file there which will provide you with an easy way to accomplish that.

To build a webapp war archive, simply run:

ant build -Dwebapp=XXX

where XXX is the name of the webapp you want to build. After the build is finished, the fully-built war file can be found in the dist directory. You may deploy this file to any servlet container.

For example:
ant build -Dwebapp=showcase
To deploy the built showcase.war to Tomcat, just place it into <TOMCAT_HOME>/webapps/ or use the Tomcat Manager Application to upload and deploy the war. After the war is deployed (and your server is started), point your browser to
http://SERVER:PORT/APPLICATIONNAME, according to your setup and the application you deployed.

Your first WebWork Application

Using the Blank Template

As said before, the webapps directory contains a blank web application template. It is meant to be left untouched, and instead, you will want to make a copy of it as a starting point for your own new WebWork-based application. Although you can perform such a copy operation yourself, there is a much easier way around: You will find an build.xml in the webapps directory, which if called with ant new will provide you with a fresh empty webapp with a name you will be prompted for.

Setting up from Scratch

Structure of your Web Application

The following illustrates how your web application should be set up. Copy the webwork-(VERSION).jar, all the *.jar files in /lib/default and any necessary optional *.jar files in /lib/(optional configuration) to your webapp/lib directory. If you need to customize your own templates (how HTML is rendered from webwork UI tags), copy the /src/java/template directory into your webapp/ directory. Your webapp should look similar to this:

/mywebapp/
/mywebapp/template/
/mywebapp/META-INF/
/mywebapp/WEB-INF/
/mywebapp/WEB-INF/classes/
/mywebapp/WEB-INF/lib/
/mywebapp/WEB-INF/lib/CORE&OPTIONAL *.jar
/mywebapp/WEB-INF/web.xml

Minimum Set of Libraries and Config Files

The following files are a minium requirement for your application.

The library files (*.jar) needs to be copied to your /mywebapp/WEB-INF/lib/ directory. If you need optional functionalities requiring dependencies on optional jars, they need to be copied to this directory, too.

Spring as default IoC Container Before WebWork 2.2, the builtin Inversion of Control (IoC) container was default. Since Spring has been found to do this job better, the container integrated in WebWork / XWork was deprecated. If you would like to follow our recommendation to use Spring as the default IoC container, please make sure to include all jars found in lib/spring in the WEB-INF/lib directory of your application.

 

web.xml:

Create the following web.xml file in [webapp]/WEB-INF. If you already have a web.xml file, just add the content of the <web-app> tag below to your existing <web-app> tag.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN"
"http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd">

<web-app>
  <display-name>My WebWork Application</display-name>
  <filter>
    <filter-name>webwork</filter-name>
    <filter-class>com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher</filter-class>
  </filter>

  <filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>webwork</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
  </filter-mapping>
  <!-- As of 2.2, Spring is the preferred IoC container rather than XWork,
       so you'll have to include the spring jars if you want to use
       Spring's IoC capabilities in WebWork. (Thanks Hani for commenting)
       If you want to use deprecated integrated IoC container instead, you may
       want to omit the following listener configuration.
  -->
  <listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
  </listener>

  <!-- The following taglib directive would be needed if your servlet container would comply
       to Servlet Spec <= 2.2
  <taglib>
    <taglib-uri>/webwork</taglib-uri>
    <taglib-location>/WEB-INF/lib/webwork.jar</taglib-location>
  </taglib>
  -->
</web-app>

This registers FilterDispatcher to enable webwork functionality for your requests. The ContextLoaderListener will take care of setting up Spring as your IoC container for WebWork. The taglib entry will help you use Tags in your JSP pages.

Read more: web.xml

xwork.xml:

Create the following file xwork.xml in [webapp]/WEB-INF/classes/.

<!DOCTYPE xwork PUBLIC "-//OpenSymphony Group//XWork 1.1.1//EN"
"http://www.opensymphony.com/xwork/xwork-1.1.1.dtd">

<xwork>
	<!-- Include webwork defaults (from WebWork JAR). -->
	<include file="webwork-default.xml" />

	<!-- Configuration for the default package. -->
	<package name="default" extends="webwork-default">
	</package>
</xwork>

For now, this xwork.xml does only two things:

• It informs WebWork that it should import the configuration information from webwork-default.xml. (This file is located at the root of the webwork.jar, so it is sure to be found.)

• It defines a default package (with the <package> section) where WebWork elements like actions, results and interceptors are registered.

Read more: xwork.xml

Onward to the First lesson or return to the Webwork Start page