Raible Designs

Struts Goodies.

I went searching on the Struts User List this afternoon and found a couple treats. The first is that you can make $135 for each Struts bug you fix. The second is StrutsCX (Struts with Castor XML and XSLT - but without JSP.). Sounds cool, downloading now.

Update: I installed StrutsCX on this server so you can try it out. Pretty cool stuff. I wonder how difficult it would be to switch from Castor XML to Castor JDO, and then generate the whole thing using XDoclet. BTW, did you know you can install WAR files in Tomcat by 1) ftp-ing the file to your server, and 2) using a url in your browser? Pretty cool - here's the one I used to install simpleweb today:

http://raibledesigns.com/manager/install?path=/simpleweb&war=jar:file:/home/raible/webapps/simpleweb.war!/

A Tutorial.

Struts meets Swing. Thanks Erik. I hope that I never have to use this. I dread that day that I have to write a Swing app over a web app.

Struts and XDoclet.

The last release of XDoclet has many more Struts-related features; such as building your validator.xml file and support for adding plug-ins to your struts-config.xml. It seems that a lot of work has been done by Erik Hatcher to make this happen. Is this the same Erik Hatcher that wrote the Ant book I'm reading? I think so. Erik sent this e-mail to the struts-dev mailing list this morning with a brief how-to on integrating XDoclet and Struts.

Apache moving from Bugzilla to Scarab?

I think it's true. While trying to remember Struts' URL for bugzilla tonight, I typed in nagoya.apache.org. Good stuff found there. Why was I going to Bugzilla for Struts? Because I don't think Roller is listed as a Powered by Struts site. This e-mail turned me on to this fact. This site is on there, but only because of Roller - so I figured I'd enter a bug for it.

Upgrading Rampage.

I went on an upgrading rampage yesterday and ended the day with the worst feeling. My Struts 1.1b2 application appeared to work fine on most things, however, I kept getting the following error when I tried to submit a form with indexed input values:

java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
 	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:324)
 	at org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtils.getIndexedProperty(PropertyUtils.java:475)
 	at org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtils.getIndexedProperty(PropertyUtils.java:410)
 	at org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtils.getNestedProperty(PropertyUtils.java:749)
 	at org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtils.getProperty(PropertyUtils.java:780)
...
Caused by: java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 0, Size: 0
 	at java.util.ArrayList.RangeCheck(ArrayList.java:508)
 	at java.util.ArrayList.get(ArrayList.java:320)
 	at com.onpoint.webapp.form.QuestionForm.getAnswer(QuestionForm.java:321)

The items I attempted to upgrade were:

• Jikes 1.15 -> 1.16
• J2SE 1.4.0_01 -> 1.4.1
• Tomcat 4.0.4 -> 4.1.12
• Cactus 1.4 -> 1.4.1
• StrutsTestCase 1.8 -> 1.9

After hours of banging my head against the wall for hours and even trying versions of my code from a week ago, I decided to try the "classic" compiler in Ant. Which I soon learned should now be named "modern." Whalla - it fixed the above problem! My advice - DON'T USE JIKES 1.16 to compile your Struts-based web app! I also found that switching to modern from jikes reduced my build process from 1 min 20 seconds to 50 seconds - I'm sold.

I ended up not upgrading to Tomcat 4.1.12 (rather to 4.0.5) because I found that my error-pages were not being recognized. I hope that a client using the application never sees an error page, but if they do - I'd rather them see my pretty page vs. a stacktrace.

[ANNOUNCE] StrutsTestCase v1.9 Released

StrutsTestCase v1.9 improves support for Struts 1.1b2 (including support for testing Tiles and sub-applications), provides several requested enhancements, and fixes many reported defects.

 The project home page can be found here:

     http://strutstestcase.sourceforge.net

 Notes for this release can be found here:

     http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=112307

I upgraded my current project to use Cactus 1.4.1 and StrutsTestCase 1.9 this morning - and everything works great! I had to add :80 to a few URLs and add ServletRedirector?Cactus_Service=RUN_TEST to my testURL for runservertests, but that was it. I've posted a message to the Cactus User list asking why these changes were necessary. If I was really smart, I'd write a whole bunch of HttpUnit and Cactus tests for Roller before integrating Tiles. Probably save me a whole bunch of time in the end - if I could only get that through to my brain.

Struts vs. Java Server Faces.

From www.theserverside.com:

Many have have wondered at what the future holds for Struts, now that an early access release of JavaServer Faces is available. Craig McClanahan, JSF Spec Lead and Lead Architect for Struts has recently commented on the subject. Craig is working on an integration library for JSF and Struts 1.1 that will allow migration to JSF without major code changes to existing struts apps. [ Craig's email on Struts + JSF integration ]

I'm smack dab in the middle of a major time crunch on my current project, or I'd review the above article and post my opinion. Maybe in the next few days.

Upgrading to Struts 1.1?

My opinion is "of course!" But that's party due to the fact that I'm an upgrade-happy developer. I'll upgrade just to be on the bleeding edge and know that I'm not missing anything. However, I do end up "backing out" of some upgrades. It's fun though, how else are you going to learn? TheServerSide.com has a new article discussing if you should upgrade to Struts 1.1 - check it out. I'm on the nightly build.

Java Server Faces Public Draft and EA download is available. I saw this last night, but Rick Salsa beat me to the punch on weblogging it. I was hoping to download and play around with it today, and give my opinion, but alas, the release I'm doing is taking a bit longer than expected.

Web Builder Conference 2002. Is anyone else going? We're having a Annual Shareholders Meeting in Vegas the weekend before, and I'm going to attend the conference the following week (Sept. 9 - 11). It'll be my first "reporting" experience, so watch this site for updates/reviews. I was one of the first to register so I'll have wireless internet access throughout the conference. My 3 goals for the experience are (1) win, (2) have fun, and (3) get some roller development done. Of course, if I'm accomplishing #1, then #2 is taken care of and #3 might slip a little.

Update on Netscape 7. It sucks worse than I originally thought - it installed on my WinXP box, but won't run - similar to OS X 10.2. The one successfull install? On Red Hat 7.3.

Invalid Reference to Login Page.

If you're using form-based authentication in your Tomcat Application - you might've seen this error before:

Apache Tomcat/4.0.4 - HTTP Status 400 - Invalid direct reference to form login page

type: Status report

message: Invalid direct reference to form login page

description: The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect (Invalid direct reference to form login page).

Well, the good news is - I figured out how to get around this today. Basically, it's caused when someone tried to go directly to your <form-login-page> to login, rather than a protected resource.

I use my index.jsp (welcome-file-list) page to do a redirect to a projected resource:

index.jsp
--------
<%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/struts-logic.tld" prefix="logic" %>

<logic:redirect page="/do/mainMenu"/%gt;

So I merely added the error-page declaration below to my web.xml, and whalla - no more error message!

<error-page>
<!-- 400 code is from trying to go directly to login.jsp -->
    <error-code>400</error-code>
    <location>/index.jsp</location>
</error-page>

XDoclet and Struts Validator

From the struts-dev list and Erik Hatcher:

My XDoclet Struts Validator validation.xml (for Struts 1.1) has been posted to the XDoclet tracker.
I'm hoping it will be added to the codebase and put into the upcoming new release of XDoclet (although I'm using XDoclet from CVS builds). Read the HTML file attachment on the issue page above for an example of how it works. If you're hand-coding validation.xml and using ValidatorForm extensions then this is for you!

I can't wait to use XDoclet in my next project! On my current project, I've already written most of the ValidationForms I need. I used the Generator package to do this, but I hope to either (1) refactor my current project to use Castor/XDoclet like Roller, or (2) use it on my next project.

I ordered an Ant book this evening in hopes of learning a lot more about Ant. I think I know a lot, but there's always room for more knowledge.