cannot find saveErrors method

[amit sharma]

In my action class i call userauthentiction function.In this function if username password not match then i want to saveErrors method but it gives error. How to solve this problem.
Thanks

[RoshaniG Gopal]

Hi dmay,
please be kind enough to post the code..so that we may a closer look.

regards,
Roshani

[amit sharma]

Let i have action class which check userauthentication.I get username and password.I make another class for checking UserAuthentication .I pass username ,password to this class.I don't want to include that logic in my action class.
UserAuthentication class return a string value which is the link to forward.
In UserAuthentication if username and password do not match then i want to save errors using saveErrors method .Below is the code which may be clear my point
In Action class
UserAuthentication ua=new UserAuthentication(username,password);
link=ua.checkAuthentication();

In UserAuthentication class
When authentication fail then i want to saveerrors in UserAuthentication class something like it .
ActionErrors e=new ActionErrors();
e.add("errors.Authentication",new ActionError("errors.InvalidAuthentication","Invalid Username And Password"));
saveErrors(req,e);
link=failure;
...................................
Is it possible to save errors in a class which not extend Action

[Merrill Higginson]

The saveErrors method is a method on the org.apache.struts.action.Action class, which your Action class extends. So, if you call saveErrors from your action class, it's actually calling the method in your superclass. If you try to call this method from another class, it obviously isn't going to work because the other class does not extend Action.

There are a couple of ways to go here, but here's what I'd suggest:

Since your UserAuthentication class contains business logic, that makes it a Model object in the MVC framework. As such, it's best if this model object has no dependencies on Struts or any other view framework. I'd refactor this method so that it either returns a boolean false or throws an exception in the case of an invalid user name or password. Then add logic in your Action class to handle the Struts messages.

The advantage to doing this is that it makes your application more flexible. If tomorrow you decide to change directions and make this a JSF, WebWorks, Swing (..the list goes on) application, you can simply plug in your model objects into the new framework and you don't have any dependencies on the old framework to worry about.

P.S. If you're using Struts 1.2 or above, you should be using ActionMessages instead of ActionErrors, as the latter is deprecated.