6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good coverage but could be better, 21 Feb 2003
This review is from: Programming Jakarta Struts (Paperback)
The target for the book is any experienced Java developer who is interested in Struts but has little or no experience with Struts. The book starts with an explanation of why Struts is a "good thing" and shows how Struts fits into a web architecture. The author then gives an explanation of each of the pieces of the Struts architecture and demonstrates a simple application. Although the explanations were clear, I felt that the author was making the architecture overly complicated by explaining things out of order. A diagram showing the interrelationships of the different Struts classes and config files would have been helpful. The author covers all the expected topics such as internationalization, exception handling, logging, and the Struts tag libraries. The chapter on the Struts tag libraries could have used more examples to make the explanations clearer. The book concentrates on Struts 1.1 and the author does a nice job of explaining the changes from the 1.0 version and the features available in the new version. The chapter on the new Validator framework is clear and the examples, though limited, are on target. However, since there is so little documentation currently available on using the built-in validators it would have better for the author to have included explanations and examples for each one. The chapter on Tiles is short but the author does a great job of explaining how it fits into the Struts architecture. The chapter on performance seemed completely unnecessary since there was nothing in it specific to Struts. Overall this book is a good addition to the Struts library. The book has some shortcomings but it provides a good deal of value.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Don't waste your money, 16 July 2004
In a word, impenetrable. By chapter 5, I still didn't have the working knowledge to send a request to a Struts servlet! The author seems to be more interested in letting us know how great his understanding is of the internals of Struts that he can find little time to let us learn how to actually employ the framework.
Furthermore, the writing style is too dry and reliant on tables of data and xml schemas, and not enough on working examples and discussion. Learning by doing, this isn't.
There are better books by more accomplished authors.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Should be called 'Building Java Web Applications...', 28 Jan 2003
This review is from: Programming Jakarta Struts (Paperback)
While this book is well written and very readable it is miss-titled. If it had been titled 'Building Java Web Applications using Struts and other tools' I would have given it a higher rating, as this is what much of it is about.
Expecting a book on how to use Struts, I was disappointed when I discovered that a lot of the book simply discusses building Java based web applications - Discussions that have little to do with Struts. In addition several of the 'Struts' chapters are inadequate, and some information is missing completely, such as how to integrate struts with declarative security and JAAS.
Blow by Blow:
Chapters 1,2 - Web and Web App. overview. Unless you are completely new to web development and Java based web applications these chapters are a waste of space and time. At best a refresher.
Chapter 3 - A high level overview of Struts. Useful if you have never used it before.
Chapter 4 - An in-depth discussion of struts configuration. Useful as a reference as the struts documentation is lacking in this regard.
Chapters 5,6,7,8 - Detailed look at framework internals. Some useful bits in here, but most of the information is not needed to actually use the framework. Still, interesting if you like to know what happens 'under the hood'.
Chapter 9 - Good chapter on the pros and cons of extending the framework, including common extension points.
Chapter 10 - All you need to know about exception handling with Struts.
Chapter 11 - Good chapter on the validation framework, including internationalised validation and re-using the validation framework outside.
Chapter 12 - Internationalisation, but does not discuss internationalisation of images and other resources. There is not enough detail in this chapter and the excuse is 'building multilingual applications is outside the scope of the book' - but the chapters about Internationalisation, right?
Chapter 13 - Chapter covering the in's and out's out using EJB's as your model. Well written, but has nothing to do with using Struts.
Chapter 14 - Good chapter on the tiles plugin, but again not enough detail.
Chapter 15 - Logging - not much struts specific stuff in here.
Chapter 16 - Packaging a web app including using ant - again not much struts specific stuff here.
Chapter 17 - Performance - you guessed it, not much struts info here either.
All in all this book is well written, but if it had been more appropriately titled, or I had known what was in it, I may not have bought it as I have a lot of the information in other titles. Having said that, if you are new to web application development and are considering using Struts but know nothing about it, then this is the book for you.
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