Actions and getting confused.

[Mark Spritzler]

I am getting a little confused here, and not even sure how to pose the question. I think I am getting things mixed up and out of order or something.
Maybe post some struts-config.xml, code, and JSP to show it?
So the main screen has two links. 1 create tour, 2 search tour.
If the user clicks the create tour, then the URL is

    tourmiles.menu.welcomeMenu.createTour=<a href="/TourMiles/execute/tourEntry">Create Tour </a>

Here is the portion of the struts-config.xml that handles this action

 
<action path="/tourEntry"
                type="com.tourmiles.struts.tour.TourEntryAction"
                className="com.tourmiles.struts.common.TemplateActionMapping"
                unknown="true">
            <set-property property="body"
                          value="tourEntryBody.jsp"/>
            <set-property property="menu"
                          value="tourEntryMenu.jsp"/>
        </action>
 

Here is the Action code.

 public class TourEntryAction extends TourMilesAction {
    protected ActionForward run(ActionMapping       mapping,
                                ActionForm          form,
                                HttpServletRequest  request,
                                HttpServletResponse response) {
        if (this.isCancelled(request)){
            return mapping.findForward("tourmiles.success");
        }
        DynaActionForm tourEntryForm = (DynaActionForm)form;
        HttpSession session = request.getSession();
        //TourVO tourVO = (TourVO)session.getAttribute("tourVO");
        TourVO tourVO = new TourVO();
        try {
            AssumptionVO assumptionVO = new AssumptionVO();
            assumptionVO.setMilesPerGallon((Double)tourEntryForm.get("milesPerGallon"));
            assumptionVO.setMilesPerHour((Double)tourEntryForm.get("milesPerHour"));
            assumptionVO.setPricePerGallon((Double)tourEntryForm.get("pricePerGallon"));
            tourVO.setAssumptions(assumptionVO);
            tourVO.setBandName((String)tourEntryForm.get("bandName"));
            TourManagerBD tourManagerBD = new TourManagerBD();
            tourManagerBD.addTour(tourVO);
            session.setAttribute("tourVO", tourVO);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.err.println("An application exception has been raised " +
                               "in TourEntryAction.run(): " + e.toString());
            return mapping.findForward("system.failure");
        }
        return mapping.findForward("tourmiles.success");
    }
} 

The Action code is using Jason's suggestion for my Menu and Body changing. W

 
public abstract class TourMilesAction extends Action {
    private static final String BODY = "body";
    private static final String MENU = "menu";
    private static final String SUCCESS = "tourmiles.success";
    public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping,
                                 ActionForm form,
                                 HttpServletRequest request,
                                 HttpServletResponse response) {
        ActionForward forward = run(mapping, form, request, response);
        if (forward != null && SUCCESS.equals(forward.getName())) {
            TemplateActionMapping templateMapping = (TemplateActionMapping)mapping;
            request.setAttribute(BODY, templateMapping.getBody());
            request.setAttribute(MENU, templateMapping.getMenu());
        }
        return forward;
    }
    protected abstract ActionForward run(ActionMapping mapping,
                                         ActionForm form,
                                         HttpServletRequest request,
                                         HttpServletResponse response);
}
 

OK, here is where I think I am getting confused. I think I am putting the Cart in front of the Horse, or the other way around. I think I am getting confused as to the role of certain classes.
OK, I think that my link for create tour is incorrect in calling tourEntry, because I think that triggers the Action, before any data can be entered by the user because the entry jsp page isn't displayed yet. Maybe I will need a SetupAction for each page that the user can traverse.
I am getting a NullPointerException when I try running my app here, and I think that is because there is no Form data in the DynaActionForm.
Does that make sense. Am I doing something wrong here.
Thanks for the help.
Mark

[Marc Peabody]

One possible cause of malfunction is your:
HttpSession session = request.getSession();
which should be:
HttpSession session = request.getSession(false);
Try it out and we'll go from there. Also, it would help me if I could see the next few lines of the exception's stack trace to pinpoint where the problem occurs.

[Mark Spritzler]

Well, I am getting a page to display when I click the link from the first menu, and that is good. I did make a SetupAction for this, and realized that I was putting the cart in from of the horse.
Mark