Struts – Wildcards example

Struts wildcards can helps to reduce the repetition in your struts-config.xml file, as long as your Struts project is following some regular file structure. For example, in User module, to implement the CRUD function, your struts-config.xml may look like following

1. No Wildcards

You need to create four action mappings for each list, add, delete and update function, and a lot of repetition.

struts-config.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE struts-config PUBLIC 
"-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 1.3//EN" 
"http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/dtds/struts-config_1_3.dtd">
 
<struts-config>
	
	<action-mappings>

	 	<action
			path="/ListUserAction"
			type="com.mkyong.common.action.UserAction"
			parameter="ListUser"
			>
 
			<forward name="success" path="/pages/ListUser.jsp"/>
 
		</action>
		
		<action
			path="/AddUserAction"
			type="com.mkyong.common.action.UserAction"
			parameter="AddUser"
			>
 
			<forward name="success" path="/pages/AddUser.jsp"/>
 
		</action>
		
		<action
			path="/EditUserAction"
			type="com.mkyong.common.action.UserAction"
			parameter="EditUser"
			>
 
			<forward name="success" path="/pages/EditUser.jsp"/>
 
		</action>
		
		<action
			path="/DeleteUserAction"
			type="com.mkyong.common.action.UserAction"
			parameter="DeleteUser"
			>
 
			<forward name="success" path="/pages/DeleteUser.jsp"/>
 
		</action>
		
		
	</action-mappings>
	
</struts-config>

2. With Wildcards

With Struts wildcards feature, your struts-config.xml can cut down into one action mapping.

struts-config.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE struts-config PUBLIC 
"-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 1.3//EN" 
"http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/dtds/struts-config_1_3.dtd">
 
<struts-config>
	
	<action-mappings>

	 	<action
			path="/*UserAction"
			type="com.mkyong.common.action.UserAction"
			parameter="{1}User"
			>
 
			<forward name="success" path="/pages/{1}User.jsp"/>
 
		</action>

	</action-mappings>
	
</struts-config>

Let’s see an use case, try access via http://localhost:8080/StrutsExample/EditUserAction.do. The “EditUserAction.do” will match the “/*UserAction” pattern, and the * matched string “Edit” is represent by {1} for later use.

In above case, the wildcards action mapping will change from

       <action
		path="/*UserAction"
		type="com.mkyong.common.action.UserAction"
		parameter="{1}User"
	>
 
	<forward name="success" path="/pages/{1}User.jsp"/>
 
	</action>

to

       <action
		path="/EditUserAction"
		type="com.mkyong.common.action.UserAction"
		parameter="EditUser"
	>
 
	<forward name="success" path="/pages/EditUser.jsp"/>
 
	</action>

Conclusion

Both struts-config.xml samples have the same functionality, but with less repetition in wildcards support. However, DO NOT overuse this wildcards feature in your project, it’s less manageable than the normal declaration.