Jakarta Struts Cookbook

7.5. Forwarding Users to a Module

Problem

You want to forward control from one module to a page in another module.

Solution

If the link is for a JSP page and not an action, create an action of type ForwardAction for that page in the target module's struts-config.xml file. Specify the path to the JSP page as the value of the parameter attribute:

<action   path="/module1Menu"
          type="org.apache.struts.actions.ForwardAction"
     parameter="/mod1/module1Menu.jsp"/>

Then define a global forward, in the struts-config.xml file of the source module, with the module attribute set to the target module prefix and the path attribute set to the name of the action you just created:

<forward name="goToModule1" module="/mod1" path="/module1.do"/>

If the link is for an action in the other module, then specify the path to the action, making sure to include the Struts ActionServlet prefix or suffix (for example, .do):

<html:link forward="goToModule1">Go To Module 1</html:link>

Discussion

You would think that you could create a link to a page in another module by specifying the module attribute on the global forward:

<forward name="goToModule1" module="/mod1" path="/module1.jsp"/>

Unfortunately, this will not work. The URL to the page is correctly generated as http://localhost/jsc-ch07/mod1/module1.jsp; however, internally Struts still thinks that you are in the source module. Module-specific Struts entities such as global forwards and message resources will not be available on the target page because Struts has not switched ...