Categories: Struts2Tutorial

Struts 2 Action Tag Example

In this tutorial, we are going to describe the action tag. The action tag is a generic tag that is used to call actions directly from a JSP page by specifying the action name and an optional namespace. The body content of the tag is used to render the results from the Action. Any result processor defined for this action in struts.xml will be ignored, unless the executeResult parameter is specified.

The action tag allows the programmers to execute an action from the view page. They can achieve this by specifying the action name. They can set the “executeResult” parameter to “true” to render the result directly in the view. Or, they can set this parameter to “false”, but make use of the request attributes exposed by the action method.

Create action class:

package com.dineshonjava.struts2.action;

import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport;

/**
 * @author Dinesh Rajput
 *
 */
public class DataTagAction extends ActionSupport {

 private static final long serialVersionUID = -7744420104547018874L;
 
 private String userName;
 
 public String execute() {
  return SUCCESS;
 }
public String sayHello() {
     return SUCCESS;
}
 public String getUserName() {
  return userName;
 }

 public void setUserName(String userName) {
  this.userName = userName;
 }
 
}

Create views
Let us have index.jsp to demonstrate the use of the generator tag:

<%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags"%>
<html>
<head>
<title>Generator Control Tag in Struts2 | dineshonjava.com</title>
</head>
 
<body>
<h2>Action Data Tag Struts2</h2>
<h3>The User Name:</h3>
<s:generator val="%{'Dinesh,Sweety,Anamika,
         Aadesh,Vinesh,Ankit,Honey '}" count="7" 
         separator=",">
   <s:iterator>
      <s:property /><br/>
   </s:iterator>
</s:generator> 
</body>
</html>

Next let us have success.jsp with the following content:

<%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags"%>
<html>
<head>
<title>Action Data Tag Struts2 | dineshonjava.com</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h2>Action Data Tag Struts2</h2>
  <s:action name="hello" executeResult="true">
      Say Hello To:  <br />
   </s:action>
</body>
</html>

Configuration Files
struts.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC
    "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 2.0//EN"
    "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-2.0.dtd">
 
<struts>
    <constant name="struts.enable.DynamicMethodInvocation" value="false" />
    <constant name="struts.devMode" value="false" />
    <constant name="struts.custom.i18n.resources" value="myapp" />
 
    <package name="default" extends="struts-default" namespace="/">
        <action name="hello" class="com.dineshonjava.struts2.action.DataTagAction" method="sayHello">
            <result name="success">/success.jsp</result>
        </action>
         <action name="actiontag" class="com.dineshonjava.struts2.action.DataTagAction">
            <result name="success">/success.jsp</result>
        </action>
    </package>
 </struts>

web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0">
  <display-name>Struts2DataTag</display-name>
 <filter>
        <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
        <filter-class>
            org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher
        </filter-class>
    </filter>
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>
    <welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
    </welcome-file-list>
</web-app>

Right click on the project name and click Export > WAR File to create a War file. Then deploy this WAR in the Tomcat’s webapps directory. Finally, start Tomcat server and try to access

URL http://localhost:8080/doj/actiontag.

This will give you following screen:

Download SourceCode
ActionDataTagExample.zip

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Dinesh Rajput

Dinesh Rajput is the chief editor of a website Dineshonjava, a technical blog dedicated to the Spring and Java technologies. It has a series of articles related to Java technologies. Dinesh has been a Spring enthusiast since 2008 and is a Pivotal Certified Spring Professional, an author of a book Spring 5 Design Pattern, and a blogger. He has more than 10 years of experience with different aspects of Spring and Java design and development. His core expertise lies in the latest version of Spring Framework, Spring Boot, Spring Security, creating REST APIs, Microservice Architecture, Reactive Pattern, Spring AOP, Design Patterns, Struts, Hibernate, Web Services, Spring Batch, Cassandra, MongoDB, and Web Application Design and Architecture. He is currently working as a technology manager at a leading product and web development company. He worked as a developer and tech lead at the Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd and was the first developer in his previous company, Paytm. Dinesh is passionate about the latest Java technologies and loves to write technical blogs related to it. He is a very active member of the Java and Spring community on different forums. When it comes to the Spring Framework and Java, Dinesh tops the list!

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