Customer Reviews

Jakarta Struts Cookbook

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I liked this book because it covers a variety of Struts-related topics - it's not just a "Struts and only Struts" cookbook. It mixes in a little Struts + database related stuff (Hibernate, MySQL), a little Struts + XML, a little Struts + JSTL, a little Struts + JWebUnit, and so on. While I wouldn't suggest getting this book if you want to learn everything there is to know about hooking Struts up with Hibernate (for example), it does give you a pretty nice overview of a variety of things you might want to integrate/use with your Struts application.

The book's assumption is you have some experience with Struts, Tomcat (or other servlet container), JSPs and Java. If you're not comfortable with any of those I'd recommend getting familiar with those first. Other than that, this is a nice book with plenty of examples to increase your Struts knowledge - whatever your current level may be.

Although the book claims to be for those with some Struts knowledge already, as someone with no previous Struts knowledge, I was able to pick it up quickly

using this book as my main reference. While some of the information in here is basic, I found the validation and localization information particularly

useful for the projects I used it on. For me, the book's greatest value is the best practices sprinkled throughout the varoius chapters, so that I don't

have to re-invent a solution that's already been done or inadvertently make a mistake that results in less maintainable code.

I didn't try out the coding examples, but I did find them useful as illustrations for how to implement some of the best practices outlined in the book. One

true test of a book's usefulness is whether the information contained inside is useful in a real world situation, and by that criteria, this book definitely

passed. It should prove useful to new and experienced Struts developers alike.

With this comprehensive work, Bill Siggelkow has covered the fundamental key Struts topics, about which every Struts developer should be knowledgeable. By key Struts topics, I mean discussions of validation, exception handling, module configuration, the different ways to dispatch to an action, and Tiles - just to name a few.

I particularly appreciate how large topics are divided, dispersed across several chapters, to be discussed in relation to broader subjects. For example, if you want to know more about Struts modules, I found 5 different recipe-like discussions, in 4 different chapters.

This book should be used as an how-to reference, particulary for intermediate-to-advanced Struts developers. If there is some special form control you want to use, or a wizard, or how to create tabs on your web page, you will find it here.

And thankfully the author writes well; in a very few pages, a given topic/recipe is explained clearly and succinctly.

I have been using Struts for almost 4 years, now to discover that there is a lot more for me to learn and use.

I worked on a Struts application for almost a year before buying a few Struts books. Since I started building an e-commerce application for a large retail company I needed to know the ins and outs of Struts.

I bought...

Struts: The Complete Reference - great intro and reference book!!

Struts Recipes - some good recipes in there, but not often used.

Struts Cookbook (this book) - excellent book! I use it all of the time to get ideas on how to do something. This is a must have for anyone working on a Struts application. It deals with Struts 1.2 which is the latest version - but look out, version 2 of Struts is on it's way.

I am a Struts newbie and have been working with Struts for only two weeks yet the Jakarta Struts Cookbook helped me build a Wizard-Style page Flow application (pages 199 to 203 in the book). Without this book I would have been totally lost and probebly very frustrated. One thing I really liked is that the author chose to use the LookupDispatchAction rather than having an Action for each step in a wizard-style application.

As I look through the book I can see there are very insightful and intuitive recipe's for dealing with future projects like pages 90 to 95 on how to Handle Date Input Fields.

Even if you are a Struts newbie this book will help you figure out how to do specific advanced tasks. If you are looking for quick information to add to your projects then this book is a great buy.

This books has a very strong collection of common and day to day programming problems with struts.Topics varied from introductory topics like (installation , Configuration , User Interface) to Advanced topics like (Lazy Dynamic Forms,Exception handling , Security , Tiles).
Every Chapter in this book provide smart solutions for common problems faces the developers.
The solutions usually provide a shortcut way for solving with deep discussion for every solution.
The books has about over 130 problems.Each problem has a smart solution with clear and deep discussion.
I think this is the most effective way to transport working experience.
I'm 2 years struts developer.
Personally I enjoyed the discussion of Hibernate and Spring usage with struts.I gained new and good information about the new struts version 1.2.
I think this book will be very useful for any struts developer who wants to absorb the others experiences for old faced problems or new ones.

A major use of Java is in writing web applications. For these, the interaction with and building of an HTML front end is perhaps the first task you face. Java Beans and JSPs have been devised to help you with part of these problems. But Struts improves, by providing a better, and easier development framework.

Let's assume you've learnt the rudiments of Struts elsewhere. But sometimes there may be a problem you've got that "surely" someone has solved. This book is replete with such instances. Siggelkow has subjectively chosen what he considers to be the most common problems. And presents each with its solution. His judgment seems pretty reasonable.

You'll find the solutions to be bite-sized and easily understood, in a page or two of exposition. Be aware that this book is not about design issues in your application. That is a higher level of structure and meant for other books.

This edition covers the most recent major release of Struts, 1.2. But most of the solutions look viable if you're still on an earlier version. So don't be put off simply because the cover says "1.2".

I bought this book assuming it covered Struts 2. I figured, since the publishing date was Feb 2009 and the description claims it covers the latest version of Struts, that meant Struts 2. Nope. No coverage of Struts 2. Since I do have a bit of experience with Struts 2, after reading the first few chapters, I realized this was old stuff. So old, that it is useless to read this.

I am going to ask for my money back. Please add something to the description of this book stating that it does not cover Struts 2. I expect better from O'Reilly. Yes, indeed, the cover shows "covers Struts 1.2", but it was barely legible on the web page graphic, and I saw it was revised and reissued in Feb 2009 and "covers the latest version". No it doesn't. The description needs to be fixed.

If I were looking for a good Struts book about 5 years ago, this would be great. It is also fine of you need to learn Struts 1.x, which is still supported by Apache and used by developers. Indeed, the last release of Struts 1.x was in 2008, but this book doesn't seem to cover 1.3.8.

Perhaps the one star rating is harsh, but I feel I was misled here. What I read of the book so far is very well written, but I need to learn Struts 2. I'll just re-read Struts In Action and make do with the online tutorials and cookbooks, and purchase the other book on Struts 2, that was (ahem) published a few months after this "revised" version.

If you need to do something within the Struts framework and that something is covered within the Chapter/Section framework of this book (and a LOT is), then consider yourself lucky. Problems and Solutions are succinctly stated, and the follow-up Discussions do a good job of explaining the why fors and the what nots.
Even the mundane, but necessary, topics of Testing and Debugging and getting Struts to play nice with JUnit and Log4J are covered.

This is a excellent book with lot of examples. I will recommend to everyone. Nice to have in your collection.