Struts Interview Questions

Q.

What is Struts?

A.

The core of the Struts framework is a flexible control layer based on standard technologies like Java Servlets, Java Beans, Resource Bundles, and XML, as well as various Jakarta Commons packages. Struts encourages application architectures based on the Model 2 approach, a variation of the classic Model-View-Controller (MVC) design paradigm. Struts provides its own Controller component and integrates with other technologies to provide the Model and the View. For the Model, Struts can interact with standard data access technologies, like JDBC and EJB, as well as most any third-party packages, like Hibernate, iBATIS, or Object Relational Bridge. For the View, Struts works well with Java Server Pages, including JSTL and JSF, as well as Velocity Templates, XSLT, and other presentation systems.

Q.  What is Jakarta Struts Framework?

A.  Jakarta Struts is open source implementation of MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern for the development of web based applications. Jakarta Struts is robust architecture and can be used for the development of application of any size. Struts framework makes it much easier to design scalable, reliable Web applications with Java.

Q.  What is ActionServlet?

A.  The class org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet is the called the ActionServlet. In the Jakarta Struts Framework this class plays the role of controller. All the requests to the server go through the controller. Controller is responsible for handling all the requests.

Q.  How you will make available any Message Resources Definitions file to the Struts Framework Environment?

A.  Message Resources Definitions file are simple .properties files and these files contains the messages that can be used in the struts project. Message Resources Definitions files can be added to the struts-config.xml file through <message-resources /> tag.
Example:
<message-resources parameter=”MessageResources” />
     

Q.  What is Action Class?

A.  The Action Class is part of the Model and is a wrapper around the business logic. The purpose of Action Class is to translate the HttpServletRequest to the business logic. To use the Action, we need to Subclass and overwrite the execute()  method. In the Action Class all the database/business processing is done. It is advisable to perform all the database related stuffs in the Action Class. The ActionServlet (command) passes the parameterized class to Action Form using the execute() method. The return type of the execute method is ActionForward which is used by the Struts Framework to forward the request to the file as per the value of the returned ActionForward object.
   

Q.  Write code of any Action Class?

A.  Here is the code of Action Class that returns the ActionForward object.

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.apache.struts.action.Action;

import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm;

import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForward;

import org.apache.struts.action.ActionMapping;

  

public class MyAction extends Action

{

   public ActionForward execute(

     ActionMapping mapping,

     ActionForm form,

     HttpServletRequest request,

     HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception

   {

           //business logic

         return mapping.findForward(\”newAction\”);

   }

 }

Q.  What is ActionForm?

A.  An ActionForm is a Java Bean that extends org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm. ActionForm maintains the session state for web application and the ActionForm object is automatically populated on the server side with data entered from a form on the client side.
  

Q.  What is Struts Validator Framework?

A.  Struts Validator Framework provides the functionality to validate the form data. It can be use to validate the data on the users browser as well as on the server side. Struts Framework emits the java scripts and it can be used to validate the form data on the client browser. Server side validation of form can be accomplished by sub classing your From Bean with DynaValidatorForm class. The Validator framework was developed by David Winterfeldt as third-party add-on to Struts. Now the Validator framework is a part of Jakarta Commons project and it can be used with or without Struts. The Validator framework comes integrated with the Struts Framework and can be used without doing any extra settings.
   

Q.  Give the Details of XML files used in Validator Framework?

A.  The Validator Framework uses two XML configuration files validator-rules.xml and validation.xml. The validator-rules.xml defines the standard validation routines, these are reusable and used in validation.xml to define the form specific validations. The validation.xml defines the validations applied to a form bean.

Q.  How you will display validation fail errors on jsp page?

A.  The following tag displays all the errors:
<html:errors/>
  

Q.  How you will enable front-end validation based on the xml in validation.xml?

A.  The <html:javascript> tag to allow front-end validation based on the xml in validation.xml. For example the code: <html:javascript formName=”myForm” dynamicJavascript=”true” staticJavascript=”true” /> generates the client side java script for the form “myForm” as defined in the validation.xml file. The <html:javascript> when added in the jsp file generates the client site validation script.

Q.  Is struts thread safe? Give an example?

A.  Struts is not only thread-safe but thread-dependant. The response to a request is handled by a light-weight Action object, rather than an individual servlet. Struts instantiates each Action class once, and allows other requests to be threaded through the original object. This core strategy conserves resources and provides the best possible throughput. A properly-designed application will exploit this further by routing related operations through a single Action.

Q.  What are the uses of tiles-def.xml file, resourcebundle.properties file, validation.xml file?

A.  tiles-def.xml is an xml file used to configure tiles with the struts application. You can define the layout/header/footer/body content for your View.

The resourcebundle.properties file is used to configure the message (error/info/warning/other messages) for the struts applications.

The validation.xml file is used to declare sets of validations that should be applied to Form Beans.

Q.  What is the difference between perform() and execute() methods?

A.  Perform method is the method which was deprecated in the Struts Version 1.1. In Struts1.x, Action.perform() is the method called by the ActionServlet. This is typically where your business logic resides, or at least the flow control to your JavaBeans and EJBs that handle your business logic. As we already mentioned, to support declarative exception handling, the method signature changed in perform(). Now execute just throws Exception.

Q.  What are the various Struts tag libraries?

A.  Struts is very rich framework and it provides very good and user friendly way to develop web application forms. Struts provide many tag libraries to ease the development of web applications. These tag libraries are:

# Bean tag library - Tags for accessing JavaBeans and their properties.

# HTML tag library - Tags to output standard HTML, including forms, text boxes, checkboxes, radio buttons etc..

# Logic tag library - Tags for generating conditional output, iteration capabilities and flow management

# Tiles or Template tag library - For the application using tiles

# Nested tag library - For using the nested beans in the application

Q.  What do you understand by DispatchAction?

A.  DispatchAction is an action that comes with Struts 1.1 or later, that lets you combine Struts actions into one class, each with their own method. The org.apache.struts.action.DispatchAction class allows multiple operations to be mapped to the different functions in the same Action class.

For example:

A package might include separate Add, Modify and Delete Actions, which just perform different operations on the same Bean object. Since all of these operations are usually handled by the same JSP page, it would be handy to also have them handled by the same Struts Action. A very simple way to do this is to have the submit button modify a field in the form which indicates which operation to perform.

Q.  How Struts relates to J2EE?

A.  Struts framework is built on J2EE technologies (JSP, Servlet, Taglibs), but it is itself not part of the J2EE standard.

Q.  What is Struts actions and action mappings?

A.  A Struts action is an instance of a subclass of an Action class, which implements a portion of a Web application and whose perform or execute method returns a forward. An action can perform tasks such as validating a user name and password.

An action mapping is a configuration file entry that, in general, associates an action name with an action. An action mapping can contain a reference to a form bean that the action can use, and can additionally define a list of local forwards that is visible only to this action.

An action servlet is a servlet that is started by the servlet container of a Web server to process a request that invokes an action. The servlet receives a forward from the action and asks the servlet container to pass the request to the forward's URL. An action servlet must be an instance of an org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet class or of a subclass of that class. An action servlet is the primary component of the controller.

Q.  Can I setup Apache Struts to use multiple configuration files?

A.  Yes Struts can use multiple configuration files. Here is the configuration example:

<servlet>

<servlet-name>banking</servlet-name>

<servlet-class>org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet

</servlet-class>

<init-param>

<param-name>config</param-name>

<param-value>/WEB-INF/struts-config.xml,

/WEB-INF/struts-authentication.xml,

/WEB-INF/struts-help.xml

</param-value>

</init-param>

<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>

</servlet>

Q.  What are the disadvantages of Struts?

A.  Struts is very robust framework and is being used extensively in the industry. But there are some disadvantages of the Struts:

a) High Learning Curve

Struts requires lot of efforts to learn and master it. For any small project less experience developers could spend more time on learning the Struts.

b) Harder to learn

Struts are harder to learn, benchmark and optimize.

Q.  What are the difference between <bean:message> and <bean:write>?

A.  <bean:message>: This tag is used to output locale-specific text (from the properties files) from a Message Resources bundle.

<bean:write>: This tag is used to output property values from a bean. <bean:write> is a commonly used tag which enables the programmers to easily present the data.

Q.  What is LookupDispatchAction?

A.  An abstract Action that dispatches to the subclass mapped execute() method. This is useful in cases where an HTML form has multiple submit buttons with the same name. The button name is specified by the parameter property of the corresponding ActionMapping.

Q.  What are the components of Struts?

A.  Struts is based on the MVC design pattern. Struts components can be categories into Model, View and Controller.

Model: Components like business logic/business processes and data are the part of Model.

View: JSP, HTML etc. are part of View

Controller: Action Servlet of Struts is part of Controller components which works as front controller to handle all the requests.

Q.  What are the core classes of the Struts Framework?

A.  Core classes of Struts Framework are ActionForm, Action, ActionMapping, ActionForward, ActionServlet etc.

Q.  What are difference between ActionErrors and ActionMessage?

A.  ActionMessage: A class that encapsulates messages. Messages can be either global or they are specific to a particular bean property. Each individual message is described by an ActionMessage object, which contains a message key (to be looked up in an appropriate message resources database), and up to four placeholder arguments used for parametric substitution in the resulting message.

ActionErrors: A class that encapsulates the error messages being reported by the validate() method of an ActionForm. Validation errors are either global to the entire ActionForm bean they are associated with, or they are specific to a particular bean property (and, therefore, a particular input field on the corresponding form).

Q.  How you will handle exceptions in Struts?

A.  In Struts you can handle the exceptions in two ways:

a) Declarative Exception Handling: You can either define global exception handling tags in your struts-config.xml or define the exception handling tags within <action>..</action> tag.

Example:

<exception

key="database.error.duplicate"

path="/UserExists.jsp"

type="mybank.account.DuplicateUserException"/>

b) Programmatic Exception Handling: Here you can use try{}catch{} block to handle the exception.

Q.  What do you understand by JSP Actions?

A.  JSP actions are XML tags that direct the server to use existing components or control the behavior of the JSP engine. JSP Actions consist of a typical (XML-based) prefix of "jsp" followed by a colon, followed by the action name followed by one or more attribute parameters.

There are six JSP Actions:

<jsp:include/>

<jsp:forward/>

<jsp:plugin/>

<jsp:usebean/>

<jsp:setProperty/>

<jsp:getProperty/>