[WW-2016] Better document @ParentPackage annotation for Zero-configuration

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 2.0.8
• Fix Version/s: 2.1.3
• Component/s: Plugin - CodeBehind

Environment

Windows XP, Tomcat 5.5.23

• Assignee: Donald J. Brown
• Reporter: Sean McRae
• Created: 28/Jun/07 19:03
• Updated: 28/Oct/12 22:07
• Resolved: 14/Jun/08 04:28

Description

So I am using the GWT plug-in (http://code.google.com/p/struts2gwtplugin/) to integrate some new GWT work into our existing Struts app. In switching to Struts 2 we now would like to use the zero-config option and call all of our actions using this plug-in - basically an interceptor. Unfortunately we cannot call our actions, all named *Action, using this method as the zero-config method and Struts' discovery of actions and the assignment of interceptors seems to ignore the default interceptor setup (I tried redefining this in struts-default.xml - see below) or by specifying a default interceptor.

It seems to me that Struts should do one of the following:

1) Use the defaultStack as defined (or overridden) in struts.properties and struts-default.xml
2) Define a stack that could be overridden in struts.xml
3) Provide some other mechanism to allow the developer to override the default zero-config interceptor stack

Issue WW-1796 addresses this in some respect, but what I would like is to define the default interceptor stack and then used the WW-1796 feature to override that if I need to.

Below are thing I tried to work around this issue.

1. Not deriving my package from gwt-default and struts-default so as not to get the defaultStack interceptor stack defined in struts-default.xml. I didn't really think this would work since the action classes aren't part of the any defined package but I thought I would try. So my package definition looked like this:

<package name="myPackage">
<interceptors>

<interceptor name="gwt"
class="com.pharmanet.server.struts2.GWTInterceptor" />

<interceptor-stack name="gwtStack">
<interceptor-ref name="gwt"/>
</interceptor-stack>

</interceptors>

<default-interceptor-ref name="gwtStack"/>

</package>

2. Added a struts.properties file to /WEB-INF/classes that sets the struts configuration files property:

struts.configuration.files=pnet-struts-default.xml,struts-plugin.xml,struts.xml and then in pnet-struts-default.xml

I defined defaultStack to only have the GWT interceptor in it. This does not seem to help either.

Using the configuration browser plug-in (that is a nice plug-in for this work), the interceptor stack that gets generated by Struts is this:

Name Type
ExceptionMappingInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ExceptionMappingInterceptor
AliasInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.AliasInterceptor
ServletConfigInterceptor org.apache.struts2.interceptor.ServletConfigInterceptor
PrepareInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.PrepareInterceptor
I18nInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.I18nInterceptor
ChainingInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ChainingInterceptor
DebuggingInterceptor org.apache.struts2.interceptor.debugging.DebuggingInterceptor
ProfilingActivationInterceptor org.apache.struts2.interceptor.ProfilingActivationInterceptor
ScopedModelDrivenInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ScopedModelDrivenInterceptor
ModelDrivenInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ModelDrivenInterceptor
FileUploadInterceptor org.apache.struts2.interceptor.FileUploadInterceptor
CheckboxInterceptor org.apache.struts2.interceptor.CheckboxInterceptor
StaticParametersInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.StaticParametersInterceptor
ParametersInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ParametersInterceptor
StrutsConversionErrorInterceptor org.apache.struts2.interceptor.StrutsConversionErrorInterceptor
AnnotationValidationInterceptor org.apache.struts2.interceptor.validation.AnnotationValidationInterceptor
DefaultWorkflowInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.DefaultWorkflowInterceptor

My theory is that the zero-config code is either ignoring defaultStack settings and making its own stack up, or Struts is not picking up on my override of struts-default.xml (maybe I need to remove it from the JAR?). I end up getting a ClassCastException at line 150 of com.opensymphony.xwork2.validator.ValidationInterceptor, I am assuming this is the point at which Struts is trying to cast my object to a Struts result (String).

Issue Links

• relates to: WW-2205 Easier linkage of auto-Detected actions to custom XWork packages