WebWork2 Plugin

Overview

The Struts 2 WebWork plugin aims to be a drop-in replacement for WebWork 2 in a web application. It includes the necessary wrappers and adapters to allow a WebWork 2-based application to need no code or configuration file changes to run on Struts 2.

Features

• Drop-in replacement of WebWork 2
• Includes adapter classes and interfaces of classes including Action, FilterDispatcher, and ActionSupport
• Supports webwork.properties and xwork.properties
• Supports JSP, Freemarker, and Velocity WebWork 2 tags

Missing Features

• Not all classes and interfaces from XWork and WebWork 2 are extended
• Tags are simple wrappers around existing Struts 2 ones
• WebWork features like the rich text editor, calendar, and continuations aren't supported
• Extra features like JasperReports need the proper Struts 2 plugin
• Sitemesh wrappers aren't provided

Usage

Setting up Dependencies

If using Maven 2, replace the WebWork 2 dependency with this plugin, so change:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.opensymphony</groupId>
    <artifactId>webwork</artifactId>
    <version>2.2.6</version>
</dependency>

to:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.struts</groupId>
    <artifactId>struts2-webwork2-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>

For other build systems, copy this plugin, Struts 2 jars, and the Struts 2 Spring plugin to your application's WEB-INF/lib directory.

Configuring Struts FilterDispatcher

The Struts FilterDispatch needs to be configured to read the webwork xwork configuration files. This can be done by adding init-params to the filter configuration:

<filter>

    <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>

    <filter-class>org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher</filter-class>

    <init-param>
        <param-name>config</param-name>
        <param-value>struts-default.xml,struts-plugin.xml,struts.xml,xwork.xml</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>configProviders</param-name>
        <param-value>org.apache.struts2.webwork2.WebWorkConfigurationProvider</param-value>
    </init-param>
</filter>

Replace webwork taglib with struts taglib

The syntax of the struts tags are almost identical to the webwork tags. The webwork taglib can be replaced with the struts taglib. To do this, copy the struts-tags.tld from the struts jar into the WEB-INF directory of the war.

Update validators.xml

Struts requires a doctype if you have a validators.xml, add the following doctype:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE validators PUBLIC
        "-//OpenSymphony Group//XWork Validator Config 1.0//EN"
        "http://www.opensymphony.com/xwork/xwork-validator-config-1.0.dtd">

Also, make sure you update the built in validators with the new validator classnames. The default validators can be found in the xwork source code at /com/opensymphony/xwork2/validator/validators/default.xml.

Update Interceptors

This plugin does not support webwork-style interceptors, so all interceptors must use Struts 2 Interceptor and ActionInvocation. Usually this only requires updating the package for these two interfaces.

Update references to ActionContext

This plugin does not support webwork-style ActionContext, so all Actions that use the Action context must be updated. Again, this is usually only requires updating the package for ActionContext.

Resources

• WebWork 2

Version History