3 hopefully easy struts questions

[KOla Oyedeji]

Hi
I just have a few hopefully easy questions on struts.
1. In a struts application is every page passed to the actionServlet? For example if i have a jsp page which does nothing but provide a link to another jsp page (which does nothing) is it necessary to pass control to the digester servlet which will then use a mapping and an action object which simply contains a forward to the intended page. This seems like an unneccsary overhead.
2. Are actionForm objects always needed? What if the page does not submit a form?
3. Can you have multiple actions per action-mapping element in the config file? If so are these all eecuted in sequence? If not how do you determine which to use?

Thanks
Kola

[Matthew Phillips]

1. In a struts application is every page passed to the actionServlet? For example if i have a jsp page which does nothing but provide a link to another jsp page (which does nothing) is it necessary to pass control to the digester servlet which will then use a mapping and an action object which simply contains a forward to the intended page. This seems like an unneccsary overhead.

In my opinion the overhead incurred in made up by the fact that if you later decide you want the jsp to do something else it will be easier to maintain. I believe that you can have a jsp bypass the controller based on the way you map your servlet in web.xml.

2. Are actionForm objects always needed?

No.

3. Can you have multiple actions per action-mapping element in the config file? If so are these all eecuted in sequence? If not how do you determine which to use?

I don't believe that you can have multiple actions in an action mapping, but you can use the forwarding mechanism to transfer control from one action to another.

[KOla Oyedeji]

Thanks for the reply
I believe that any url which does not end in *.do is not passed to the actionServlet. But as you pointed out ensuring that my pages are still pased to the servlet will make it easier to maintain in future - thanks
Kola