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In the prepare method you should put any statements that must be executed no matter what other Action class method will be called and also statements that should be executed if validation fails. Usually statements in the prepare method set the value for Action class instance fields that will be used to populate form controls and get the values that will be used to set the initial form field values.

In addition to automatically running the prepare method the [prepare interceptor|http://struts.apache.org/2.3.1.2/docs/prepare-interceptor.html] will also call a method named prepare\[ActionMethodName\].  For example, if you define a prepareInput method and the Action will call the input method, the prepare interceptor will call the prepareInput and the prepare methods before calling the input method.  

Example Application

If you examine class EditAction in the example application (see above) you'll see that it implements the Preparable Interface. In the prepare method is this code:

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