RE: Struts? WebWork? Tapestry? Cocoon?
Aslak tipped me off about Anthony's Wafer research project. There I found the feature matrix of all the web application frameworks they've looked at. I don't know when this matrix was last updated, but I question a few of the entries for Struts. In particular:
- Template Languages - it supports Velocity and XML
- Security - it supports adding a role attribute to your action-mappings to secure servlets, as well as roles in Tiles, Struts-Menu and the logic:present tag library to limit access when using container-managed security. I'm guessing that they mean a different type of security here.
- Documentation - Apache doesn't host an online demo, but I've seen many, for instance my strutscx demo [strutscx home]. There's also the stxx project. I'm guessing the development team has to host one to fit the satisfy the requirement here. It does have a number of tutorials though, including my favorite Strut By Strut. Example code is all over the place, O'Reilly has been pumping out a lot of it lately.
- IDE Integration - Easy Struts and the Struts Console.
- WAP/WML - The Struts WML Tag Library.
I hope this helps to boost Struts' credibility on this matrix. I'm off to Barnes and Nobles to write some more on Tiles and Exception Handling with Struts. It's open 9-11 everyday and all the local libraries closed at 5 today. I'm about halfway through the chapter (page 15). Tomorrow will be fun-filled with a full day at the library and hopefully I will finish. Then an all-nighter (maybe? I hope not) on Monday night to proofread, and then send on Tuesday. I doubt I can get my struts-resume app done by Tuesday night, so I'll probably turn that in later in the week. Although, using XDoclet, Hibernate and Erik's StrutsGen tool, I might just be able to pump the whole app out in a couple of hours!