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Java 8

From this version of Struts, the framework requires Java 8 at least to run.

Servlet API 3.1

Struts 6.0.0 requires a servlet container which supports Servlet API 3.1 at least, it won't work with older versions.

Dependencies

Update Struts dependencies to 6.x.x.

Remove the following plugin dependencies because they were dropped and aren't supported anymore:

• sitegraph plugin

Support for Velocity was has been moved into a dedicated pluginsplugin, also Velocity based tags were moved into the new plugin, see

<package name="mystrutsapp" extends="json-default, velocity-default">
  ...
</package>

DTD

Please use a proper DTD header in struts.xml as demonstrated below:

<!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC
        "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 6.0//EN"
        "https://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-6.0.dtd">

Class changes

com.opensymphony.xwork2.config.providers.XmlConfigurationProvider became abstract, please use org.apache.struts2.config.StrutsXmlConfigurationProvider instead.

...

com.opensymphony.xwork2.XWorkException was replaced by org.apache.struts2.StrutsException.

XWork constants

All Xwork constans had been already deprecated, with this version all of them have been removed and Struts constants have been used instead. See tickets

New constants

Tag escape behaviour

After migrating to the latest Freemarker (which enables auto-escaping by default) you should top stop using ?html in your custom tags and freemarker based pages. Also when embedding one a tag in another <s:a>, <s:submit> and <s:component> tags like in the example below:

<s:a href="%{...}">
  <img src="<s:url value='/images/icon_waste_sml.png'/>"/>
</s:a>

The the inner tag will can be automatically escaped , to avoid such behaviour (if needed), set "escapeHtmlBody" attribute to "falsetrue" as below:

<s:a href="%{...}" escapeHtmlBody="falsetrue">
  <img src="<s:url value='/images/icon_waste_sml.png'/>"/>
</s:a>

There is a global flag struts.ui.escapeHtmlBody which controls this behaviour for all the tags. Tag's attribute takes precedence over the global flag. It's related to

The date tag

The <s:date/>  tag has been adjusted to support a new Java 8 Date/Time API, which means it uses DateTimeFormatter instead of SimpleDateFormat. Yet there is a slight change in patterns supported by both classes, which means your current formatting patterns can stop working after migrating to Struts 6.x and default format will be used instead. You can find more details in

Deprecated interfaces

A set of action related interfaces have been marked as deprecated. These interfaces have a new proper versions in another package, please start using the new versions as the depretacted interfaces will be removed with the next major release.

See

Javatemplate Checkbox tag

Javatemplate Checkbox tag implementation had been missing support for submitUnchecked attribute. This has been fixed yet it can introduce a NullPointerException when you will use Boolean or String to hold an unchecked value as submittedUnchecked is set to false by default, which means the unchecked  value won't be sent and stored in the action, see

Static methods access

It won't be possible to access static methods using OGNL expression, eg. @com.app.Util@makeCode() won't work anymore. If you are still using this approach you must wrap access to static methods with action instance methods or use static field access instead.

Temp/Work directory of ApplicationServer/ServletContainer

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