Struts in Action: Building Web Applications with the Leading Java Framework

Author: Ted Husted, Cedric Dumoulin, George Franciscus, David Winterfeldt, Craig R. McClanahan List Price: $44.95 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 1930110502 Publisher: Manning Publications Company (November, 2002) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 3,738 Average Customer Rating: 3.62 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

I agree with some other reviewers in that the number/density of examples go down as you get along, and I disagree with them in that that's a bad thing. Remember, unlike many other books where you can decide to read chapters in any order, this book would add most value if chapters are read sequentially from start, they are already logically organized and one builds on another, and once you really go thru the first few chapters understanding them thoroughly, I mean not by only reading them but by writing your own code along with, you would NOT need the idiot-proof examples to grasp the meat of the later chapters, once you got the foundation right you can easily get the feel of it. This is not a 'for idiots' book and I would like to thank the authors for keeping it that way, you have enough information in the book to understand the Struts framework (and then some) pretty well, but you gotta take your hands outta your pockets and write some code!

I liked the way Tiles, Validator and Velocity has been explained, keep up the good work Ted!

I read the book right away and spent a few weeks going over all the examples in the book. My overall feeling is that this is a good book but it suffers from a lot of the same thing that affects other Struts book. These books were published right around the release of Struts 1.1 and so they are on the fence where they talk about Struts 1.0 and 1.1. Since I had used Struts 1.0 before, the sections that described the changes from 1.0 to 1.1 was very helpful.

Like other books, there is some mention of JSTL but not any details. The section on tag libraries is extensive and well written.

I just went through all my Struts books again as I had to teach a 6 week class on Struts. I went through the five Struts books I owned and I settled on 'Programming Jakarta Struts' by Chuck Cavaness as my finalist. Struts in Action is really a good book but I felt the Chuck Cavaness did a better job of acting as a tutorial. So if you only want to buy one Struts book, I would recommend the Chuck Cavaness book. However, if you want more than one, I would highly recommend this book as your second book on Struts.

The authors assume a fair amount of previous experience on the part of the reader. The assumption is that there is a familiarity with HTML, JSP syntax, JavaBean conventions, and similar technologies. The reader should also be familiar with URLs, web application archives (WAR files), and other concepts surrounding web application development. By assuming these pre-existing skills, the authors can spend more time and space on Struts information. So if you are just starting out in web application development in Java, you may struggle a bit with this information.

The authors also assume the use of Tomcat for the web application server. Since I'm working with IBM's Websphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD), I've had to make some mental adjustments on how to get things to work in that environment without the author's direct instruction. Because of this, I'd recommend that you be familiar with WSAD before using this book.

The style of the book is very readable, and the concepts are easy to grasp. You may have to read over the material a couple of times to get it, but that's not a fault of the writing. New technology and concepts can be difficult to grasp. Struts is no exception. I can say that I'm understanding the material more quickly than I expected, and that's always a good thing.

Conclusion
If you're looking to learn Struts, you would be well-served to get this book and dig in.

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