Message
From: Don Brown [mailto:mrdon (AT) twdata (DOT) org]
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Pilgrim, Peter wrote:
great so is Ted Husted also involved in the 2nd edition
and I presume Manning is fine with both Struts in Action
and Webwork in Action in the future ``merging'' as one.
Ted has helped early on by reviewing our proposal and TC,
but the book is being
written by Nick Heudecker (of Hibernate Quickly) and myself.
I actually haven't
talked to Manning since the merger was announced :) but they
did know big
changes were in the works.
I have just read Niall's question and answer. So WebWork will
probably usurp the Struts Core layer at some point, correct?
I'm not sure what you mean. The WebWork 2.2 code will become
Struts Ti core,
hopefully the basis for Struts Action 2.0. I see both Struts
Action 1.x and
Struts Action 2.0 as viable frameworks for developers to work with.
If I understand you rightly the traditional `RequestProcessor'
derived process flow, namely
ActionServlet =RequestProcessor =Action =View
is gone to be replaced by the WebWork / X Work processing
chain.
If someone has invested in Commons Chain command will they
be able to quick migrate or directly use Struts 2.x
engine.
Is there an equivalent of the `RequestProcessor' concept in the
webwork/xwork?
it makes a little clearer.
So developers have a choice?
1) Learn the WebWork 2.x philosophy
2) Don't learn WW2 way but use the Struts compatibility layer
instead until it runs out of steam or is it deprecated.
Sure, although I imagine the compatibility layer is there
mostly for application
migration and not so much for new development. I think there
is a lot of value
in being able to upgrade your application piece by piece and
not requiring a
huge rewrite, which is I believe one of the big selling
points of Struts Ti as
opposed to JSF.
That begs the question, what is the best way for Struts developer
to learn WebWork 2.
I'd say pick up the WebWork in Action book
() written by the
primary WebWork
developers themselves. course once Struts in Action 2ed
comes out, it will
be better ;)
Has anyone writen a WebWork introductio guide for experienced
Struts users yet?
So Struts Ti definitely requires Java 5, because of annotations.
Nope. The first phase of Struts Ti won't have the annotation
stuff in there,
but the second phase will probably use a nifty annotation/tag
layer Rich Feit of
Beehive wrote which allows developers the choice to use Java
5 annotations or
XDoclet style tags.
Therefore, to be clear, Struts Ti will only require Java 1.4
or greater, just
like Struts Action 1.3.
That's good to know.
Thanks for answering my questions
No problem. They were such good questions, in fact, I'll try
to make them into
a FAQ on the wiki here soon, as I imagine they will be quite
common. :)
that's a great idea
Don

>There isn't directly, and this was one of the first additions I made
>to WebWork when I started Struts Ti. In WebWork, the servlet
>dispatcher does everything prior and including identifying the
>Action, then hands it off to the interceptor chain. My code in
>Struts Ti replaced this with a servlet that hands off to a
>RequestProcessor, which used Commons Chain to perform all the
>preprocessing.
>
>I plan to be adding this back in shortly after we import the WW code base.

I'd been meaning to follow up on this. I think you, or someone,
briefly floated the idea of building the Struts compatibility layer
at S.org before doing the import.

If it was you, I assume you've changed your mind? If it wasn't you,
no bother -- I think the better approach is to bring it here.
Presumably the Struts committers are going to heavily involved in the
compatibility, so if for no other reason, it will be easier for us to
work on that in an Apache.org repository.

How many WebWork committers are there, anyway?

Joe