Struts is the most popular framework for building scalable Java Web applications. The first part of this book explains the latest version of Struts and teaches how to build real-world Struts applications. The second part goes the extra mile to discuss how to design Struts applications and solve common problems in Struts development. It's like two books at the price of one.

More importantly, this book is a tutorial designed to make the reader truly understand the concepts. It explains not only how to use Struts' features, but also how a certain feature works under the hood and which to choose if similar features exist. Examples are relevant and based on real-world applications. Several important topics rarely mentioned in other books—such as file upload, paging, object caching—are given detailed treatment.

The first part is for beginners and Struts developers who don't feel they have a complete grasp of Struts. It explains the following and many more:

- The Model-View-Controller design pattern

- Action forms

- User input validation

- The Validator Plug-in

- JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL)

- The JSP 2.0 Expression Language (EL)

- HTML, Bean, Logic, Nested Tag Libraries

- Application configuration

- The Custom SelectLabel Tag

- Tiles - Message handling and internationalization

- Struts-JSF Plug-in

- The open source DisplayTag Library

- File upload and programmable file download

- Jakarta Commons BeanUtil Class

In addition, this book deals with many design topics such as

- Data persistence

- Transfer objects

- Configuration information sharing

- Object caching

- Application security

- Paging and sorting

- HttpServletRequest wrapping

- Early session invalidation

The last chapter, "How Struts Works", dissects Struts' source code and explains the components that together make Struts tick. This chapter is particularly interesting to readers who want to know how Struts works in the background and how to extend Struts. Understanding it helps you design and develop more effective Struts applications. This book is for you if you need one written with clarity and readability in mind.