Struts 2 History

Apache Struts is an open-source framework that is used for developing Java web application. Originally developed by the programmer and author Craig R. McClanahan, this was later taken over by the Apache Software
Foundation in 2002. Struts have provided an excellent framework for developing application easily by organizing JSP and Servlet based on HTML formats and Java code. Strut1 with all standard Java technologies and packages of Jakarta assists to create an extensible development environment. However, with the growing demand of web application, Strut 1 does not stand firm and needs to be changed with demand. This leads to the creation of Strut2, which is more developer friendly with features like Ajax, rapid development and extensibility.

Struts is a well-organized framework based on MVC architecture. In Model-View-Controller Architecture, Model stands for the business or database code, View represents the page design code and the Controller for navigational code. All these together makes Struts an essential framework for building Java applications. But with the development of new and lightweight MVC based framworks like Spring, Stripes and Tapestry, it becomes necessary to modify the Struts framework. So, the team of Apache Struts and another J2EE framework, WebWork of OpenSymphony joined hand together to develop an advanced framework with all possible developing features that will make it developer and user friendly.

Strut2 contains the combined features of Struts Ti and WebWork 2 projects that advocates higher level application by using the architecture of WebWork2 with features including a plugin framework, a new API, Ajax tags etc. So the Struts communities and the WebWork team brought together several special features in WebWork2 to make it more advance in the Open Source world. Later the name of WebWork2 has changed to Struts2. Hence, Apache Strut 2 is a dynamic, extensible framework for a complete application development from building, deploying and maintaining.

WebWork is a framework for web-application development that has been included in Struts framework 2.0 release. It has some unique concepts and constructs like its compatibility of working within existing Web APIs in Java rather than trying to replace them completely. It has been built specifically taking into account the developer’s productivity and code simplicity. Furthermore it is completely context dependent that provides a wrapper around XWork. When working on web applications the web work provides a context that helps web developer in specific implementations.

While, XWork provides a mechanism that is used for configuration and factory implementation management. This mechanism is dependencies inject mechanism.like Ajax, rapid development and extensibility.

Struts 2 Features

The strut-2 framework is designed for the compilation of the entire development cycle including of building, developing and maintaining the whole application. It is very extensible as each class of the framework is based on an Interface and all the base classes are given an extra application and even you can add your own. The basic platform requirements are Servlet API 2.4, JSP API 2.0 and Java5.

Some of the general features of the current Apache Strut 2 framework are given below.

Architecture – First the web browser request a resource for which the Filter Dispatcher decides the suitable action. Then the Interceptors use the required functions and after that the Action method executes all the functions like storing and retrieving data from a database
. Then the result can be seen on the output of the browser in HTML, PDF, images or any other.


Tags - Tags in Strut 2 allow creating dynamic web applications with less number of coding. Not only these tags contain output data but also provide style sheet driven markup that in turn helps in creating pages with less code. Here the tags also support validation and localization of coding that in turn offer more utilization. The less number of codes also makes it easy to read and maintain.
MVC – The Model View Controller in Strut 2 framework acts as a coordinator between application’s model and web view. Its Controller and View components can come together with other technology to develop the model. The framework has its library and markup tags to present the data dynamically.

Configuration – Provides a deployment descriptor to initialize resources in XML format. The initialization takes place simply by scanning all the classes using Java packages or you can use an application configuration file to control the entire configuration. Its general-purpose defaults allow using struts directly Out of the box.

Configuration files are re-loadable that allows changes without restarting a web container.

Other Features:
• All framework classes are based on interfaces and core interfaces are independent from HTTP.
• Check boxes do not require any kind of special application for false values.
• Any class can be used as an action class and one can input properties by using any JavaBean directly to the action class.
• Strut 2 actions are Spring friendly and so easy to Spring integration.
• AJAX theme enables to make the application more dynamic.
• Portal and servlet deployment are easy due to automatic portlet support without altering code.
• The request handling in every action makes it easy to customize, when required.