Results

Overview

Results are string constants that Actions return to indicate the status of an Action execution. A standard set of Results are defined by default: error, input, login, none and success. Developers are, of course, free to create their own Results to indicate more application specific cases. Results are mapped to defined Result Types using a name-value pair structure.

Result tags

Result tags tell WebWork what to do next after the action has been called. There are a standard set of result codes built-in to WebWork, (in the Action interface) they include:

String SUCCESS = "success";
String NONE    = "none";
String ERROR   = "error";
String INPUT   = "input";
String LOGIN   = "login";

You can extend these as you see fit. Most of the time you will have either SUCCESS or ERROR, with SUCCESS moving on to the next page in your application;

<result name="success" type="dispatcher">
    <param name="location">/thank_you.jsp</param>
</result>

...and ERROR moving on to an error page, or the preceding page;

<result name="error" type="dispatcher">
    <param name="location">/error.jsp</param>
</result>

Results are specified in a xwork xml config file(xwork.xml) nested inside <action>. If the location param is the only param being specified in the result tag, you can simplify it as follows:

<action name="bar" class="myPackage.barAction">
  <result name="success" type="dispatcher">
    <param name="location">foo.jsp</param>
  </result>
</action>

or simplified

<action name="bar" class="myPackage.barAction">
  <result name="success" type="dispatcher">foo.jsp</result>
</action>

Global Results

Global results allows you to define result mappings which will be used as defaults for all action configurations and will be automatically inherited by all action configurations in this package and all packages which extend this package. In other words, if you have the same result specified within multiple actions, then you can define it as a global result.

global results example

<package name="default">
....
<global-results> 
    <result name="login" type="dispatcher"> 
        <param name="location">login.jsp</param> 
    </result> 
</global-results> 
<action name="foo"  class="mypackage.fooAction">
    <result name="success" type="dispatcher">bar.jsp</result> 
</action>
<action name="submitForm"  class="mypackage.submitFormAction">
    <result name="success" type="dispatcher">submitSuccess.jsp</result> 
</action>
...
</package>

Same thing

<package name="default">
....
<action name="foo"  class="mypackage.fooAction">
    <result name="success" type="dispatcher">bar.jsp</result> 
    <result name="login" type="dispatcher">login.jsp</result> 
</action>
<action name="submitForm"  class="mypackage.submitFormAction">
    <result name="success" type="dispatcher">submitSuccess.jsp</result>
    <result name="login" type="dispatcher">login.jsp</result>  
</action>
...
</package>

Defining Default results-types

Webwork has the ability to define a default result type for your actions. Thus, you don't have to specify the result-type for results using the default. If a package extends another package and you don't specify a new default result type for the child package, then the parent package default type will be used when the type attribute is not specified in the result tag.

<!-- parts of xwork.xml  -->
....

<result-types>
 <result-type name="dispatcher" class="com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.ServletDispatcherResult" default="true"/>
 <result-type name="redirect" class="com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.ServletRedirectResult"/>
 <result-type name="velocity" class="com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.VelocityResult"/>
</result-types>

....

<action name="bar" class="myPackage.barAction">

<!-- this result uses dispatcher, so you can omit the type="dispatcher" if you want -->
  <result name="success">foo.jsp</result>

<!-- this result uses velocity result, so the type needs to be specified -->
  <result name="error" type="velocity">error.vm</result>

</action>

....

Child pages