Hi James,
I know the feeling. That is one of my frustrations when buying books. I think with my book there a couple of things that help it stand-out.
1. The premise of the book starts with a discussion of common web
development anti-patterns. I try to identify these anti-patterns
and talk about how web development frameworks can help resolve these
issues.
In terms of Struts specific issues, I try to talk about some of the
specific design issues (i.e. putting to much business logic in the
Action class) that I and other people I have talked to have run into
when putting together Struts-based applications.
2. I try to bring a discussion about design
patterns and Struts into
the book. One of the most common problems I see with new developers
to Struts is that they don't realize using Struts does not mitigate
their responsibility in "architecting" an application.
Struts is a presentation-tier framework and you still need to think
carefully about how you are going to build an application before
diving into Struts. Otherwise, you can find too much of your
application logic tied into the Struts framework.
Good design is often about simple principles applied at the right
time and place. These are all topics I address in the book.
3. I do spent a great deal of talking about the different type of
ActionForm
(Standard ActionForms, DynaActionForms and HashMap ActionForms)
and validation mechanisms that are available in Struts.
I talk about using the Validator framework and specifically when
and how
you should write your own validation rules. Chapter 7 of the
book deals with a great deal.
I will admit that I do not dive into the full detail of the
Validator framework, but I try to provide enough information
for the developer or tech lead to make their own decision about
what is going to work for them.
Really what I wanted to do with my book is try to articulate my own experiences with Struts. When I say I do not want to re-hash the manual, what I am really getting at is I don't want pages upon pages of API specifications. (And I am not targeting any one specific Struts book in general).
I want to see the author's personal experiences. That is where a lot of the real fun in understanding.
Hope that answers your questions.
Thanks,
John