Configuring Struts with Spring

There are 2 ways in which Spring features can be injected in Struts. The common point in all the 2 strategies is that we need to register a Struts plug-in that is aware of the Spring application context. Add the following code to your struts-config.xml to register the plug-in:

<plug-in className="org.springframework.web.struts.ContextLoaderPlugIn">

<set-property property="contextConfigLocation"

value="/WEB-INF/training-servlet.xml,/WEB-INF/…"/>

</plug-in>

ContextLoaderPlugIn loads a Spring application context (a WebApplication-

Context, to be specific), using the context configuration files listed (commaseparated)

in its contextConfigLocation property.

• Extending the ActionSupport class instead of Action class

public class ListCourseAction extends ActionSupport {
 public ActionForward execute(
  ActionMapping mapping,
  ActionForm form,
  HttpServletRequest request,
  HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {

ApplicationContext context = getWebApplicationContext();
CourseService courseService = (CourseService) context.getBean("courseService");
Set allCourses = courseService.getAllCourses();
request.setAttribute("courses", allCourses);
return mapping.findForward("courseList");
 }
}

The ActionSupport class extends the Action class and has the added method of getWebApplicationContext() which will return the current applicationContext with the help of which we can get the beans.

• Using the DelegatingActionProxy

The struts action mapping in the struts-config needs to have the DelegatingActionProxy as the class attribute value

<action path="/listCourses"

type="org.springframework.web.struts.DelegatingActionProxy"/>

and the equivalent mapping in the spring config should be

<bean name="/listCourses"

class="com.springinaction.training.struts.ListCourseAction">

<property name="courseService">

<ref bean="courseService"/>

</property>

</bean>