Customer Reviews

Professional Jakarta Struts (Programmer to Programmer)

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

 

 

This book is VERY poorly edited. Yes, by brute force I've learned a bit more about Struts than what I'd already learned previously from a few tutorials.

It seems these authors may know lots about the topic but do NOT communicate it well. Topics are introduced within other topics without so much as an explanation. Actions, ActionMappings, ActionErrors, etc., are introduced without sufficient explanation as to why and in what situations they should be used. There are errors throughout. In sample code on a page an explanation refers to "highlighted lines in the code". -- Nothing is highlighted!!! This is just the tip of the iceberg.

I downloaded the sample code from the Wrox web site and it is in disarray.

After looking around the Wrox site it seems they are in disarray as well. It seems they've been bought, sold, or whatever recently.

After having published such a great book with XSLT, 2nd edition by Michael Kay back in April, 2001, I'm highly disappointed with this recent (2003) Wrox publication.

A good book not only requires authors competent in the subject matter (which these *seem* to be) but need to have the ability to communicate/teach the topic well. And, editors are necessary to ensure cohesion, consistency, and accuracy. The later two have clearly not been accomplished here.

I feel burned and would be reluctant to get another book from Wrox unless and until they can somehow prove they can raise the bar significantly.

BUYER BEWARE!

When I first started with struts, I read several pieces on the subject, but none of it "jelled" for me...that is up until I read this book.

You will need additional reference material after you get into serious development - but, as a "Hello World", this book is great.

I bought other books that let me down on learning Struts. But I found this little gem (perfect for other writers to follow this learning method) and I finally understand and learn, -yes learn-, Struts.

Other books like Kick Start Struts are very bad designed for "more dummies" and they obscure things adding other frameworks like Torque!?

Thanks Guys!

I have five Struts books and this is the best by far. There is NO fluff in it. It has THE BEST appendices of any Struts book, showing the tag library calls. (It makes a great reference book.) The examples are clean and get right to the point. I liked the style where they show one way to achieve a goal, explain how it can be done better, then show a better way, etc., refining the example as they go.

I also liked the short, to-the-point chapters on using Struts with Eclipse, databases, Tiles, etc. This is the only book I've read that made it clear how to use Tiles.

There are two down-sides to this book. First, it has an poor index, which is normally the kiss of death on a technical book. Secondly, the example code that is on the web-site is a mess! Those are the reasons I gave this a 4-star instead of a 5-star rating. (Some of the code may be out of date, too, but I have given up expecting a printed book to be current with programming API's that seem to change daily.)

On top of all that, the price is right!

I have two gripes with this book. First, it's really a shame that the authors didn't take the time to include information about Unix/Linux installation and configuation since the vast majority of us will be deploying on those platforms, if not developing on them outright. Secondly, the book is a little behind the curve regarding Struts 1.1. For example, the use of Struts tag libraries has been considerably simplified and the file upload example on page 391 uses the deprecated FormFile class instead of Jakarta FileUpload. It's only natural for APIs to change, but if you plan on buying this book, be prepared to spend some additional time on the Jakarta web site.

Could have been better, could have been worse. The high points of the book were its coverage of the Validator plug-in, it's coverage of core struts, advanced concepts, and the end-to-end "employee" application that illustrates the proper usage of basic Struts. The low points were the coverage of Tiles and the Struts tag libraries. I was very disappointed that the end-to-end application, while doing a good job of illustrating the core of Struts, didn't make use of Validator, Tiles or any of the advanced features like modules or DispatchActions.
The examples left a lot to be desired - none of them, except for the "employee" application in chapter 14, were complete. I don't know, maybe this was didactic - I learned a lot about Struts while fumbling around, trying to fill in the gaps in their samples.
You'll need to have a _very_ firm handle on JSP's and Servlets if you're going to make any sense of this book. Chapter 2 reviews JSP's, but it's strictly a review; you had better know, for example, the difference between session scope and page scope before starting this book.

I wondered why the book had so many typos in numerous examples of programs and configuration files listed on the book. It really led me to have a second thought about the quality of this book. Despite many editorial errors, the author did a good job on explaining the "how-it-works" of different parts in the Struts framework with using a step-by-step approach. The book provided a rich explanation on the logical flow of ActionServlet, Preprocessor, PlugIn, and form submisson, etc. Especially in the chapter of "Working with the Validator", it addressed the mechanics and usage of validator in a decent detail. On the other hands, the chapter about 'Tiles' was weak, no pictures no diagram no sample screenshot at all but only lists of source codes with little descriptions. It's hard for readers to follow and visualize the look & feel on various layout samples described in the book. The last five chapters were about Struts taglib APIs, HTML taglib, Tiles taglib, Logic taglib, Template taglib, and Bean taglib. Do not expect detail description or usage examples. These chapters seemed to me only a kind of re-printing of the APIs from the Struts online documentation, and took like almost 100 pages, 1/4 of the whole book.

Overall, the book is okay if you've known Struts a bit before and just want to refresh your memory. If you're a Struts starter, try others.

(Reviewed by Otto Yuen, 12-Aug-2008)

This book as all of us seem to agree starts off well. But after Chapter 3 the quality just goes down. It explains how to use plugins and RequestProcessor just like a manual would without delving into situations where it might be helpful. I found it utterly useless and am going to return it. There was a time when I picked a WROX book eyes shut and got decent quality but this book was a complete let down.

The book starts off really well. It contains alot of detailed explanation of how things work. But the main problem with this book is that it was not proof read(QAd). The errors weren't huge, but they are really irritating. Instead of focusing on trying out the examples, you focus on getting the example to work. For me, it was just too irritating to follow along. I still use the book as a reference, but for learning purposes, SKIP.

I see loads of developers complaining about coding practices, OS installation details, etc. - but the bottom line is this -
If you want to learn Struts and you have a good JSP background to begin with, this book will get you up to speed quickly and prepare you for a Struts project. From a developers perspective, that is really the most important thing. It delivers on explaining complex things simply, clearly and with a very good flow of information. You can learn Struts from this one book.