The Open Source Zone

WOW!

I read some good reviews about this book in this forum and decided to give it a chance. This book is best for working with Struts. You can learn everything you need to know quite simply and quickly and then use the book later as a reference. There's no question about it, the book does an excellent job of describing the various elements of the struts framework. The explanations are clear, simple and concise!

Bottom line: Highly Recommended

I am clearly in the minority here, as all other reviewers gave this book a very high rating. Although I don't feel that I got my money's worth, obviously a fair number of people are satisfied with the book.

I was unhappy with the large number of errors and typos in the book. Tech books from all publishers tend to have a lot of typos, but Struts Recipes has even more than most.

For example, on page 183 a recipe begins this way: "For the purposes of this recipe, the underlying information we wish to make viewable is a java.util.Vector of maps with COUNTRIES, CITIES, ALTITUDE, and POPULATION as the keys." (Capitals in original.) However a few sentences later we have "Once the map is created, it is inserted into the List." And indeed, in the code sample that follows, the "java.util.Vector" has become an ArrayList.

Also...

- In the first sentence, "maps" should be "Maps" with the letters "M", "a", and "p" in code typeface and the "s" in Roman.
- In the sentence beginning "Once the map is created..." the word "map" should be "Map" in code typeface. What's really amazing is that the editor gave the word "List" the correct treatment in the very same sentence!
- It makes no sense to pluralize "COUNTRIES" or "CITIES". They should be singular because the names of the keys are (or would be -- see below) "COUNTRY" and "CITY".
- In the code sample, there is no Map key called "CITY" or "CITIES". However, there is a key called "CAPITAL".
- The names of the keys should have been set off with quotes or by putting them in code typeface.
- In the next sentence we have "The first listing, 4.5, shows the IterateTest class with the method to obtain the Collection we'll be using, getGeo()." In the code sample the method is not called "getGeo()". It's "getCountries()".

That's somewhere around seven errors in one page, depending on what you consider an error and what you consider merely poor style.

Another problem I had with the book is that some recipes were totally inadequate. For example on page 247 there is a recipe on server-side validation using the Struts Validator Framework. The authors leave out several crucial pieces of information. In order to get the Struts Validator to work, certain settings must be done in struts-config.xml, including setting an ActionMapping's "input" attribute. The authors don't even mention this. They simply left it out.

Later, they explain the effect of a failed validation by saying "if the field is left blank by the end user, it fails and propagates the errors.required key ... in the property file." They don't give any explanation of what they mean by "propagates". How does the developer display the message to the end user? The information is simply not there.

Although I wasn't happy with this book, I should say that I did get some useful information out of it. I was not able to get enough information about the topics most important to me, but it would not be fair to say that the money was completely wasted. In particular, the explanation of resource bundles was reasonably adequate.

In the past I've bought books published by Manning that were really great. However, Manning really fell down on the job with this one.

As an experienced programmer I really needed a book that could take me a step further in Struts development.

This is a book I keep reading over and over as it contains solutions to real-life problems.

Thanks George, for giving us such a gem!

During my project developing my e-commerce web site, I keep this book by my side. It has tremendous useful strategies which helps to solve real-life business problems.

The book is written in very organized manner. Define the task, Explain the background, provide solution and recommend the best practice. It is easy to read and the topics in the book are well covered.

It is truly a 'must-have' for building solid business applications.

J2EE consultant and Struts authority George Franciscus and web engineer Danilo Gurovich present Struts Recipes, a programming guide written especially for developers and architects who need to craft secure, robust, and maintainable applications, particularly for business or commercial use. Chapters instruct the reader in how to unit test an application for function, performance, and coverage; how to make an application secure; how to integrate with Hibernate; dealing with exceptions; generating alternative views with PDF and XSL; how to design a layered Struts application; and much more. Each offered recipe is designed to be adaptable to the user's need, as well as speedy to learn and apply, and the list of recommended "best practices" such as "Do not use wild cards in Ant scripts" and "Prefer classes over interfaces to store constants" will keep one's code legible and easily modifiable to co-workers, assistants or successors. A "must-have" for any serious-minded Struts programmer.