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This tutorial will demonstrate how to call an Struts 2 action, using GWT to submit a form and use the returned data, without using the GWT plugin. The recommended way of integrating GWT with Struts 2 is using the GWT Plugin

To use this tutorial you will need the Struts 2 JSON Plugin installed.

Write your action.

Example action:

...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC
    "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 2.0//EN"
    "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-2.0.dtd">

<struts>

  <package name="example"  extends="strutsjson-default">
    <action name="Hello" class="example.Hello">
      <result type="json" />
    </action>

    <action name="Main" class="com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport">
      <result>org.apache.struts.gwt.Main/Main.jsp</result>
    </action>
  </package>

</struts>

The "Hello" action has a result of type "json", which will serialize the action object into a JSON string. If "firstName" is set to "John" and "lastName" is set to "Galt", the output of the "Hello" action will be:

...

This class will take care of making the request. Why? Why do I need this class? Couple of reasons, first, there is a bug on bug on HTTPRequest.asyncPost which doesn't encode the payload properly, second, if you want to submit a form, you have to encode it yourself, and this class will help you do that. Optionally you can download a jar containing this class (with more methods) from here, and add this to your GWT application file (i.e Main.gwt.xml):

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