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<document>

    <properties>
        <title>User Guide</title>
        <author email="sidler@apache.org">Gabriel Sidler</author>
        <projectfile>xdocs/project.xml</projectfile>
        <subprojectfile>xdocs/struts.project.xml</subprojectfile>
    </properties>

    <body>

    <section name="VelocityStruts User Guide">

        <p>This guide explains how to setup and configure a VelocityViewServlet
        which can render the views of a Struts-based web application. The servlet
        will create a VelocityEngine to render *.vm (velocity template) files using
        contextual information provided by a Struts Controller action.</p>

        <p>A set of built-in tools have been created which provide the same
        functions as the Struts JSP Tag libraries for Tiles, Validator, forms, links,
        messages, and errors.</p>

        <p>The distribution contains examples which demonstrate the use of the
        built-in Struts tools. The examples are packaged into a web archive file
        (velstruts.war). </p>

        <p>
        This document is <strong>not</strong> a general introduction to the Velocity
        template language and its syntax. If you are new to Velocity, please consult
        <a href="http://velocity.apache.org/engine/devel/getting-started.html">Getting
        Started with Velocity</a>.
        </p>

        <p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>
        <ol>
          <li><a href="#Background">Background</a></li>
          <li><a href="#Model_2_Architecture">Model 2 Architecture</a></li>
          <li><a href="#Installation">Installation</a></li>
          <li><a href="#Rendering_the_View">Rendering the View</a>
            <ol>
                <li><a href="#Velocity_Template_Language">Velocity Template Language</a></li>
                <li><a href="#Exposing_Data">Exposing Data</a></li>
                <li><a href="#Access_to_Servlet_Resources">Access to Servlet Resources</a></li>
                <li><a href="#Access_to_Struts_Framework_Resources">Access to Struts Framework Resources</a></li>
            </ol>
          </li>
        </ol>

        <br clear="all"/>
    </section>

    <section name="Background">
        <p>The documentation will explain the steps necessary to
        integrate <a href="http://velocity.apache.org/">Velocity</a>
        with <a href="http://struts.apache.org/1.x/index.html">Struts 1.x</a> applications.
        It is expected that the reader already has a basic understanding of those
        projects.</p>

        <p>To start working with Velocity and Struts we recommend reading the
        user guide, installing and browsing the example applications and reference
        documentation, then installing the VelocityStruts view layer into your own
        application.</p>

        <p>If this documentation does not answer all your questions, please post
        questions to the
        <a href="http://velocity.apache.org/contact.html">Velocity-User mailing list</a>
        and we'll be happy to help! (And we'll update this doc!)</p>

        <br clear="all"/>
    </section>

    <section name="Model 2 Architecture">
         <p>In the JSP world, the terms <i>Model 1</i> architectures and
         <i>Model 2</i> architectures were coined to refer to particular ways of
         designing and building web applications. It is important that you understand
         the fundamental difference between these two architectural approaches. JSP
         can be used in applications designed after Model 1 architectures as well as
         Model 2 architectures. Velocity cannot. It has been designed very consciouly
         as a view technology for web application architectures based on Model 2.</p>

         <p><strong>Model 1 Architectures</strong></p>
         <p>In a Model 1 architecture, the JSP page alone is responsible for
         processing the incoming request and replying back to the client. Using
         MVC speak, the controller and the view  are implemented within the same
         JSP page. Model 1 architecture are suitable only for very simple application
         scenarios. In medium size to large projects, the lack of a separation between
         business logic and view oftentimes leads to difficulties in separating the
         web designer's works from the server developer's work and causes project
         management headaches.</p>

         <p><strong>Model 2 Architectures</strong></p>
         <p>In a Model 2 architecture, the control component, including business logic,
         data access and request handling, are strictly separated from the view component.
         The view does not contain any processing logic. It is simply responsible for
         displaying the data that resulted from processing the request. This may be a
         static page or more often a dynamic page. Such an approach typically facilitates
         are clear delineation of the roles and responsibilities of the developers and
         the web designers. The more complex an application, the greater the benefits of
         using a Model 2 architecture will be.</p>

         <p>The paper
         <a href="http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-1999/jw-12-ssj-jspmvc.html">Understanding JavaServer Pages Model 2 Architecture</a>
         provides a more in-depth discussion of Model 1 and Model 2 architectures.</p>

         <p><strong>What does this mean?</strong></p>
         <p>The Struts framework can support both architectures, but all the
         facilities it provides are really aimed at making the construction of
         Model 2 applications easy. Velocity on the other hand cannot be used
         to build Model 1 architectures. It lacks the libraries to support such
         a design. I am emphasizing this here because I want to make sure that
         you have all the relevant facts before you decide on Velocity for your
         projects. This is especially important for people considering to port
         existing application built on the Model 1 approach or a mixed Model 1
         / Model 2 approach. The good news is, that today for any serious application
         Model 2 is state of the art and Velocity will support you very well on
         that route.</p>

         <br clear="all"/>
    </section>

    <section name="Installation">

        <p>This section explains the basic setup to configure the VelocityViewServlet
        to render the web application views in Struts applications.</p>

        <p>Setup is almost identical to the standard
        <a href="view.html#Installation">VelocityViewServlet installation</a>,
        please review that for more details. The extended VelocityLayoutServlet, or any
        custom extension, can also be used with Struts. (That particular servlet adds
        the ability to reuse shared html layout across multiple pages.)</p>

        <p>Steps by step:</p>
        <ol>
          <li><strong>velocity-tools-x.x.jar</strong> which contains the VelocityStruts
          and VelocityView classes must be added to the WEB-INF/lib directory.</li>
          <li>VelocityViewServlet needs to be installed into the servlet container
          (web.xml) so it can handle all request for *.vm files.</li>
          <li>velocity.properties configuration file must be added </li>
          <li>toolbox.xml file must be added, and mappings must be setup for the
          standard tools which expose the Struts objects to the template. (sample
          toolbox.xml file below)</li>
        </ol>
        <p>And that's all there is to it!</p>
        <p>At this point, it should be possible to change a Struts ActionMapping
        to 'forward' to a *.vm file placed in the webapp root directory and have
        it be displayed!</p>

             <p><b>toolbox.xml</b></p>
<sourcecode>
&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;

&lt;toolbox&gt;
  &lt;tool&gt;
     &lt;key&gt;link&lt;/key&gt;
     &lt;scope&gt;request&lt;/scope&gt;
     &lt;class&gt;org.apache.velocity.tools.struts.StrutsLinkTool&lt;/class&gt;
  &lt;/tool&gt;
  &lt;tool&gt;
     &lt;key&gt;msg&lt;/key&gt;
     &lt;scope&gt;request&lt;/scope&gt;
     &lt;class&gt;org.apache.velocity.tools.struts.MessageTool&lt;/class&gt;
  &lt;/tool&gt;
  &lt;tool&gt;
     &lt;key&gt;errors&lt;/key&gt;
     &lt;scope&gt;request&lt;/scope&gt;
     &lt;class&gt;org.apache.velocity.tools.struts.ErrorsTool&lt;/class&gt;
  &lt;/tool&gt;
  &lt;tool&gt;
     &lt;key&gt;form&lt;/key&gt;
     &lt;scope&gt;request&lt;/scope&gt;
     &lt;class&gt;org.apache.velocity.tools.struts.FormTool&lt;/class&gt;
  &lt;/tool&gt;
  &lt;tool&gt;
     &lt;key&gt;tiles&lt;/key&gt;
     &lt;scope&gt;request&lt;/scope&gt;
     &lt;class&gt;org.apache.velocity.tools.struts.TilesTool&lt;/class&gt;
  &lt;/tool&gt;
  &lt;tool&gt;
     &lt;key&gt;validator&lt;/key&gt;
     &lt;scope&gt;request&lt;/scope&gt;
     &lt;class&gt;org.apache.velocity.tools.struts.ValidatorTool&lt;/class&gt;
  &lt;/tool&gt;
&lt;/toolbox&gt;
</sourcecode>

        <br clear="all"/>
    </section>

    <section name="Rendering the View">

        <p>This section introduces you to the key concepts of rendering
        the view with Velocity in a Struts application.</p>

        <subsection name="Velocity Template Language">

            <p>Velocity is a template engine implemented in Java. Velocity
            templates typically are HTML pages with embedded scripts (although
            Velocity has been used for many other application scenarios). Scripts
            are written in the Velocity Template Language (VTL). Following is a
            simple example of a HTML view with embedded VTL statements:</p>

<sourcecode>
&lt;HTML&gt;
&lt;BODY&gt;
    &lt;h2>Order Confirmation&lt;/h2&gt;

    &lt;h3&gt;Delivery Adress:&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;br&gt;
    Name: $customer.name&lt;br&gt;
    Street: $customer.street&lt;br&gt;
    City: $customer.zip $customer.city

    &lt;h3&gt;Ordered Items&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;br&gt;
    &lt;table&gt;
    #foreach( $item in $order.items )
        &lt;tr&gt;
            &lt;td&gt;$item.quantity&lt;/td&gt;
            &lt;td&gt;$item.description&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;/tr&gt;
    #end
    &lt;/table&gt;
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;
</sourcecode>

            <p>When processed this will produce output similar to the following.</p>

<sourcecode>
&lt;HTML&gt;
&lt;BODY&gt;
    &lt;h2>Order Confirmation&lt;/h2&gt;

    &lt;h3&gt;Delivery Address:&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;br&gt;
    Name: Peter Pan&lt;br&gt;
    Street: Crain St. 10&lt;br&gt;
    City: 60201 Evanston IL

    &lt;h3&gt;Ordered Items&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;br&gt;
    &lt;table&gt;
        &lt;tr&gt;
            &lt;td&gt;1&lt;/td&gt;
            &lt;td&gt;Hair Dryer, Philips, 1000W, white&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;/tr&gt;
        &lt;tr&gt;
            &lt;td&gt;1&lt;/td&gt;
            &lt;td&gt;Kitchen Mixer, Betty Bossy, 240W, black&lt;/td&gt;
        &lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;/table&gt;
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;
</sourcecode>

            <p>VTL has been designed from the ground up as a simple template
            language for view designers. With less than ten supported directives
            it is easy to learn. In fact, most people are up and productive within
            less than a day.</p>

            <p>Velocity does not allow Java scriptlets, which helps enforce a
            strict MVC separation.</p>

            <p>Please consult the following two documents for an in-depth coverage
            of VTL:</p>

            <ul>
              <li><a href="http://velocity.apache.org/engine/devel/user-guide.html">Velocity User's Guide</a></li>
              <li><a href="http://velocity.apache.org/engine/devel/vtl-reference-guide.html">VTL Reference Guide</a></li>
            </ul>

            <br clear="all"/>

        </subsection>

        <subsection name="Exposing Data">

            <p>The main purpose of Velocity in a web application is typically to
            merge HTML templates with dynamic application data to generate
            dynamic views. An essential aspect of Velocity is therefore the
            mechanism that allows the application controller (in MVC speak) to
            expose data to the template.</p>

            <p>It is important to understand the relationship between a
            Struts-based application and the Velocity template servlet. Both
            are simply Java Servlets which perform a specific task.</p>

            <p> Requests to the Struts application are processed, application data
            is manipulated and eventually all data and control is forwarded to a
            View layer.</p>

            <p>The Velocity servlet in this case is responsible for merging the
            provided application data with a template to produce HTML output.</p>

            <p>We should note that the Velocity servlet is not exclusively tied
            to the Struts application. It can serve requests from web clients
            directly or any other servlet application as well. Technically, the
            Struts application hands over a request to Velocity through the
            <code>forward</code> method of <code>javax.servlet.RequestDispatcher</code>.
            </p>

            <p>Application data is passed from the Struts servlet to the Velocity
            servlet as attributes of either the servlet request, session or context.</p>

            <p>Therefore a developer simply needs to set an attribute to pass data
            to the View layer and make that data available for the template. For example:
            </p>
            <p>
            <sourcecode>request.setAttribute("Customer", CustomerObj);</sourcecode>
            Whatever public methods are available on the CustomerObj instance will be
            made available to the template designer. Assuming there is a public
            getName() method, they may for example write: $Customer.name or
            $Customer.getName().
            </p>

            <p>There is a heirarchy to the objects exposed to the template designer.
            For instance, if you have set an attribute "foo" in both the session and
            the request,</p>
<sourcecode>request.setAttribute("foo", "request foo");
session.setAttribute("foo", "session foo");</sourcecode>
            <p>then the request attribute will take priority, and using </p>
            <sourcecode>$foo</sourcecode>
            <p>in the template will give you</p>
<sourcecode>request foo</sourcecode>
            <p>Priority is given in the following order:
            <ol>
              <li>Tools specified in the toolbox.xml (e.g. $link, $tiles, etc.)</li>
              <li>The servlet classes (e.g. $request, $response, $session, $application)</li>
              <li>References set locally within the template</li>
              <li>Request attributes</li>
              <li>Session attributes</li>
              <li>Servlet context (application) attributes</li>
            </ol>
            </p>
            <p>This heirarchy allows the developer to reserve control of key references
            (for tools and servlet resources) from the template designer and allows for
            values to be set at various servlet scopes in a manner similar to working
            with JSP and Struts.</p>

            <br clear="all"/>
        </subsection>

        <subsection name="Access to Servlet Resources">

            <p>VelocityStruts automatically populates the context with the following
            objects of the Servlet API on each template processing request:</p>

            <table>
              <tr>
                <th>Context Key</th>
                <th>Class</th>
                <th>Remarks</th>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$request</td>
                <td>javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest</td>
                <td>the current servlet request</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$session</td>
                <td>javax.servlet.http.HttpSession</td>
                <td>the current session, if one exists</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$application</td>
                <td>javax.servlet.ServletContext</td>
                <td>the servlet context</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$response</td>
                <td>javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse</td>
                <td>the current servlet response</td>
              </tr>
            </table>

            <br clear="all"/>

            <p>The following examples illustrates how servlet resources are
            accessed from within Velocity template. The example renders
            the list of HTTP header fields of the current servlet request.
            In the same way, any public method of the above listed objects can
            be called from within templates:</p>

<sourcecode>#foreach( $header in $request.HeaderNames )
  &lt;b&gt;$header:&lt;/b&gt; $request.getHeader($header)&lt;br&gt;
#end</sourcecode>

            <p>The resulting output is something like this:</p>

<sourcecode><b>Referer:</b> http://localhost:8080/struts/doc/examples.html
<b>Connection:</b> Keep-Alive
<b>User-Agent:</b> Mozilla/4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)
<b>Pragma:</b> no-cache
<b>Host:</b> localhost:8080
<b>Accept:</b> image/gif, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, image/png, */*
<b>Accept-Encoding:</b> gzip
<b>Accept-Language:</b> en
<b>Accept-Charset:</b> iso-8859-1,*,utf-8
<b>Cookie:</b> JSESSIONID=aaaecXd7bnLPAr
</sourcecode>

            <br clear="all"/>

        </subsection>

        <subsection name="Access to Struts Framework Resources">

            <p>The Struts framework provides resources that
            are useful to template designers. These include logical names for
            physical resources, internationalized messages, error handling,
            form handling, etc. The interesting question is now how template
            designers can gain access these framework resources. In the JSP world, a set
            of custom tag libraries provide template
            designers access to the Struts framework resources. In the Velocity
            world, the equivalent of the JSP custom tag libraries are <b>view
            tools</b>. View tools are a very simple concept. They are Java objects
            with public methods that are put into the Velocity context. Tools are
            accessed by key and allows template designers to call on their public methods.</p>

            <p>A set of seven view tools is included with VelocityStruts
            that provide template designers access to Struts framework resources.
            These seven view tools essentially achieve the integration between
            Struts and Velocity and they can be considered the core of this
            project.</p>

            <table>
              <tr>
                <th>Context Key</th>
                <th>Class</th>
                <th>Remarks</th>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$text</td>
                <td><a href="MessageTool.html">MessageTool</a></td>
                <td>Provides access to the Struts application resources for internationalized text.</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$errors</td>
                <td><a href="ErrorsTool.html">ErrorsTool</a></td>
                <td>Provides methods to check for and output Struts error messages.</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$messages</td>
                <td><a href="ActionMessagesTool.html">ActionMessagesTool</a></td>
                <td>Provides methods to work with Struts action messages.</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$link</td>
                <td><a href="StrutsLinkTool.html">StrutsLinkTool</a></td>
                <td>Provides methods to work with URIs.</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$form</td>
                <td><a href="FormTool.html">FormTool</a></td>
                <td>Provides miscellaneous methods to work with forms and form
                beans in the context of Struts applications.</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$tiles</td>
                <td><a href="TilesTool.html">TilesTool</a></td>
                <td>Provides miscellaneous methods to work with Tiles in the
                context of Struts applications.</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td>$validator</td>
                <td><a href="ValidatorTool.html">ValidatorTool</a></td>
                <td>Provides methods to dynamically generate javascript validation
                in the context of Struts applications.</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td colspan="3">Note: The shown keys are the recommended values.
                They can be changed in the configuration.</td>
              </tr>
            </table>

            <p>The following example illustrates some of the features of the MessageTool
            for working with internationalized messages. For the example we assume that
            the Struts message resources contain the following two key=value pairs:</p>

<sourcecode>
title=Struts Example Application
test=This string has 4 replacement parameters: {1}, {2}, {3}, {4}
foo.bar=whatever
</sourcecode>

<p>Then, the following script...</p>

<sourcecode>
$text.title
$text.get('test', ['bear', 'dog', 'cat'])
$text.exists('tutle')
$text.foo.bar
</sourcecode>

<p>..will produce this output:</p>

<sourcecode>
Struts Example Application
This string has 4 replacement parameters: bear, dog, cat, {4}
false
whatever
</sourcecode>

            <p>Please see the <a href="StrutsTools.html">Tool Reference Documentation</a>
            for more details about the view tools. Furthermore, the Velocity/Struts
            <a href="index.html#Download">example application</a> comes with several
            working examples that show how these tools are used.</p>

            <br clear="all"/>

        </subsection>

        <br clear="all"/>

    </section>

 </body>
</document>

