Java Data Objects

Struts with JDO

Struts is a component framework developed as an open source project (under the auspices of the Jakarta Apache project) to ease development of scalable web-tier applications. Struts defines an updated Model-View-Controller pattern (called MVC2) for implementing web-based applications. It also defines servlet and JSP components as either views or controllers, with the model implemented as business objects accessible to both view and controller components.

Views are either servlets or JSP pages that provide the HTML-generation end of the process. Controllers are usually servlets and provide the flow control and delegation to the business objects. Many common patterns for generating web-based forms are implemented in Struts as base classes, making construction of complex forms-based applications easy.

When using JDO with Struts, the issues are the same as with generic servlet and JSP pages. The PersistenceManagerFactory (or multiple instances of PersistenceManagerFactory) used with the application is constructed at server or application startup, and each component that needs JDO services needs to access the PersistenceManagerFactory in order to get the PersistenceManager used in the business logic.

Struts 1.1 does not include direct support for JDO, but it provides a flexible way to configure the controller servlet: by defining PlugIn classes that are initialized when the web container loads the Struts servlet. You can exploit this Struts feature by writing a JDOPlugIn ...