The Struts Framework: Practical Guide for Java Programmers

I've been trying to learn Struts/JSP/Servlets/Tomcat all at once over the last 4 days by reading 1500+ pages from books and web-resources. (my head really hurts!) Nothing really brought it all together until I picked up this book. At only 128 pages, it quickly got to the heart of Struts and by page 20, half of my questions were cleared up. If you want to learn Struts, this is the quickest most informative read. Then buy Jakarta Struts-Pocket Reference and you'll have 98% of your needs covered. Plus together they cost me under $35 - a great bargain!

After reading one review of this book about how short it was(and not that great a resource), and, after first seeing how small the book was, I was afraid that this review might be correct. But it has turned out to be the exact opposite. It gets right to the classes and configuration specs you need to get at in short descriptions and examples. I read "Programming Jakarta Struts" by Cavaness the week before, and found the content in Spielman's book almost as rich. I would use this book more as a learning tool and Cavaness' book more as a reference. I thought the cdmanager app example code was very good - although the source jar was not organized as required by the build.xml file(about my only criticism).

I am a new Struts developer and found the Jakarta Struts site pretty hard to follow to get the information I needed. I purchased this book based on the reviews it has been getting and found it to better than I had expected it to be. It helped me totally understand what all of the Struts 1.1 components are, howto use them, along with details on how to use the custom tags. This booksaved me days of plowing through source code and javadocs and now I'm ready to start my application development. Good job! I wish more books were written straight to the point and as useful as this one is. I really got a lot more than I paid for, for once in my life. I'll look for more books by this author. It was a real treat to have such a technical subject laid out in such an easy reading format. Bravo

The book was spectacular in the concise approach to the use of the Struts Framework. The explanations of all of the different areas were well thought out without being verbose. The sprinkling of URL references within the context of the chapter of use was solid and you didn't have to jump back and forth between the chapter and appendix.The cdManagerSample is a solid fundamental learning experience that has a lot of nice techniques within it for those of us who are totally on our own. I especially liked the web.xml setup with the log4j and database servlets that were included in addition to the cdmanager actionservlet. I liked the package structure, jsp use of the Struts template and comments within the code that explained that it was done for teaching and that in real life, you would use these other specific techniques.Chapter 11 mentions the useful extensions such as Tiles, Validator and the Jakarta Commons Utilities. This could be the topics for the next book. I would hope that other topics such as application scope caching, a data access object and design patterns would be considered as material for going to the next level.

Those of us in the high tech industry have become used to buying technical books that can take down a forest. How refreshing to finally have an author who doesn't feel the need to drone on about every ancillary topic there is. This book covered everything I needed to know to get up, running, and productive with Struts 1.1. It is clearly and concisely written and speaks directly to Java developers. No bones about it. My boss had come into my cube on Friday morning and told me that we'd be looking at Struts on Monday for a new project. I purchased this book on overnight delivery, and was able to get through it in its entirety in a single day. This included downloading the sample application and using it. I walked in Monday not only knowingwhat I needed to know to thoroughly impress my boss, but also able to make suggestions and comments on how we should go about building our project thanks to this book. With a sub- price tag, it's hard to justify spending 2 and 3 times the amount on another book. If you need a true practical guide, this is it. I've already recommended it to the rest of our development team, cause I don't want to give up my copy!