Struts Hello World Example in Eclipse

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a Struts hello world application in eclipse. First create a new project, go to File->New and select DynamicWebProject.

Enter the project name and click the Finish button.

Add the following jar files to the WEB-INF\lib directory.

Right click the src folder and select New->Package.

Enter the package name as com.vaannila.form and click Finish.

Now right click the newly created package and select New->Class.

Enter the class name as HelloWorldForm and the superclass name as org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm and click Finish.

In the HelloWorldForm class add the following code.

package com.vaannila.form;

import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm;

public class HelloWorldForm extends ActionForm {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = -473562596852452021L;

    private String message;

    public String getMessage() {
        return message;
    }

    public void setMessage(String message) {
        this.message = message;
    }
}

In the same way create a new package com.vaannila.action and create a HelloWorldAction class extending org.apache.struts.action.Action. Add the following code to the action class and save it.

package com.vaannila.action;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.apache.struts.action.Action;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForward;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionMapping;

import com.vaannila.form.HelloWorldForm;

public class HelloWorldAction extends Action {

@Override
public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping, ActionForm form, HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
    HelloWorldForm hwForm = (HelloWorldForm) form;
    hwForm.setMessage("Hello World");
    return mapping.findForward("success");
    }
}

Here we typecast the ActionForm to HelloWorldForm and set the message value.

Add the following entries in the struts-config.xml file.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<!DOCTYPE struts-config PUBLIC
          "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 1.3//EN"
          "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-config_1_3.dtd">

<struts-config>

    <form-beans>
     <form-bean name="helloWorldForm" type="com.vaannila.form.HelloWorldForm"/>
    </form-beans>

 <global-forwards>
        <forward name="helloWorld" path="/helloWorld.do"/>
    </global-forwards>

    <action-mappings>
        <action path="/helloWorld" type="com.vaannila.action.HelloWorldAction" name="helloWorldForm">
         <forward name="success" path="/helloWorld.jsp" />
        </action>
    </action-mappings>

</struts-config>
Now configure the deployment descriptor. Add the following configuration information in the web.xmlfile.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="2.5">
  <display-name>StrutsExample1</display-name>

  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>config</param-name>
      <param-value>/WEB-INF/struts-config.xml</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>2</load-on-startup>
 </servlet>

  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.do</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>

  <welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
  </welcome-file-list>
</web-app>
When we run the application the index.jsp page will be executed first. In the index.jsp page we redirect the request to the helloWorld.do URI, which inturn invokes the HelloWorldAction.
<%@ taglib uri="http://struts.apache.org/tags-logic" prefix="logic" %>
<logic:redirect forward="helloWorld"/>
In the action class we return the ActionForward "success" which is mapped to the helloWorld.jsppage. In the helloWorld.jsp page we display the "Hello World" message.
<%@taglib uri="http://struts.apache.org/tags-bean" prefix="bean" %>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title>Hello World</title>
</head>
<body>
<bean:write name="helloWorldForm" property="message"/>
</body>
</html>
After creating all the files the directory structure of the application looks like this.

On executing the application the "Hello World" message gets displayed to the user.