Here’s a tutorial to show how to access beans declared in the Spring Ioc container in a web application developed with Apache Struts 1.x.

Download this Struts 1.x + Spring example – Struts-Spring-Hibernate-Example.zip

Spring comes with “Struts-specific” solution for access beans declared in the Spring Ioc container.

  1. Register a Spring’s ready-make Struts plug-in in the Struts configuration file.
  2. Change your Struts action class to extend the Spring’s ActionSupport class, a subclass of the Struts Action class.
  3. The ActionSupport provide a convenient getWebApplicationContext() method for you to access beans declared in Spring Ioc container.

1. Struts + Spring dependencies

To integrate with Struts 1.x, Spring is required the “spring-web.jar” and “spring-struts.jar” libraries. You can download it from Spring web site or Maven.
pom.xml

        <!-- Spring framework --> 
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring</artifactId>
		<version>2.5.6</version>
	</dependency>
 
        <dependency>
		<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
		<version>2.5.6</version>
	</dependency>
 
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-struts</artifactId>
		<version>2.0.8</version>
	</dependency>

2. Register Struts plug-in

In your Struts configuration file (struts-config.xml), register the Spring’s ready-make Struts plug-in – “ ContextLoaderPlugIn“.

struts-config.xml

<struts-config>
    <!-- Spring Struts plugin -->
 	<plug-in className="org.springframework.web.struts.ContextLoaderPlugIn">
		<set-property property="contextConfigLocation"
			value="/WEB-INF/classes/SpringBeans.xml" />
  	</plug-in>
</struts-config>

The “ContextLoaderPlugIn” will handle all the integration work between Struts and Spring. You can load your Spring’s bean xml file into the “contextConfigLocation” property.

SpringBeans.xml

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd">
 
	<!-- Beans Declaration -->
	<import resource="com/mkyong/customer/spring/CustomerBean.xml"/>
 
</beans>

3. Spring’s ActionSupport

In Struts Action class, extends the Spring “ActionSupport” class, and get the Spring’s bean via “getWebApplicationContext()” method.

CustomerBean.xml

   	<bean id="customerBo" class="com.mkyong.customer.bo.impl.CustomerBoImpl" >
   		<property name="customerDao" ref="customerDao" />
   	</bean>

Struts Action

package com.mkyong.customer.action;
 
import java.util.List;
 
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
 
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForward;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionMapping;
import org.springframework.web.struts.ActionSupport;
 
import com.mkyong.customer.bo.CustomerBo;
import com.mkyong.customer.model.Customer;
 
public class ListCustomerAction extends ActionSupport{
 
  public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping,ActionForm form,
	HttpServletRequest request,HttpServletResponse response) 
        throws Exception {
 
	CustomerBo customerBo =
		(CustomerBo) getWebApplicationContext().getBean("customerBo");
 
	...
	return mapping.findForward("success");
 
  }
}

Done.

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[ Read More ] You can find more similar articles at Struts 1.x Tutorials