Hi,

I usually access my cached droplist data directly from the jsp - eg have placed a bean called "ReferenceDataCache" on application scope with getter methods. In jsp I can simply call:

<c:set var="schoolList" value="${ReferenceDataCache.schoolsList}" />
<html-el:select ...>
<html-el:optionsCollection name="schoolList" label="description" value="schoolCode" />
</html-el:select>

I also try to keep my struts forms only containing properties for the http posted data.

The controllers responsibility is dealing with http requests (flow control, forwarding to the correct action etc) so I'm not quite sure what you mean by saying "the jsp tag actually by pass the
controller to get the data from Datasource"

Additionally, specialized data can be added as request attributes, either via your action/helper class or some sort of page controller (tiles has this feature) - the idea behind a page controller (view tier) is your page knows what data it needs, and your jsps are not tied to your actions - in an ideal world you could reuse your jsps without having to change much (or if any) backend java code.

Sometimes action classes/methods contain far to much business logic which including supplying data necessary for the view - even if you decide to forward to a different page your action is still preparing data for a page that no longer needs it!

Just my 2c

Regards,
Paul

________________________________

From: Zhang, Larry (L.) [mailto:lzhang20@(protected)]
Sent: Sat 2/3/2007 9:39 AM
To: Struts Users Mailing List
Subject: Design issue




Think about a typical struts app, and on the jsp there are text field
and drop downs. There are two approaches:

(1) the action populates all the text fields and drop downs from the
Database, and then set the value into the actionform, then the JSP will
get the values from the actionform
(2) the action populates some fields (text field for example), and leave
other fields (drop down for example) to JSP to populate, on which a jsp
tag can go to the datasource to get the values.

I personally prefer (1) since in (2) the jsp tag actually by pass the
controller to get the data from Datasource.

What do you think? Thanks.

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