Thanks Craig, I go with you. All I wanted was to avoid the duplication of information(in the form of variables) in JVM. But your point about conversion of data type is totally agreeable.
So, I shall copy the values in Action class using BeanUtils.copyProperties() to this new object(DTO). Regards Puneet Agarwal -----------------------------> "Struts"..."Action"..."Struts in Action"..."Action in Struts"...[possibly]"Action with Struts"...? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Craig R. McClanahan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Struts Users Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Puneet Agarwal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, March 10, 2003 4:50 PM Subject: Re: [Design Pattern]FormBean in Model Layer > > > On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Puneet Agarwal wrote: > > > Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 11:31:29 -0000 > > From: Puneet Agarwal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Reply-To: Struts Users Mailing List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, > > Puneet Agarwal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: Struts Users Mailing List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Subject: Re: [Design Pattern]FormBean in Model Layer > > > > Yeah I am going to adopt this. I am not very sure of how exactly am I going > > to do that(at the moment). But yes it sounds too good. > > > > I do *not* agree with the idea of using an ActionForm (either DynaForm or > not) as a DTO. Using a custom interface gets around one of the problems > (introducing a dependency on Struts), but not around the biggest one -- > the data types in a correctly written ActionForm are wrong for the > business tier. > > In order to fulfill its purpose, the ActionForm properties must allow > incorrect input to be redisplayed -- for example, a field that accepts an > integer should allow the user to type "1a3" instead of "123" and have > "1a3" redisplayed with the error message. In order for this to work, the > ActionForm property must be a String. Yet, in a properly designed DTO, > the property type would be "int". > > The best design practice is to create a separate DTO object (or DynaBean) > with the correct data types, and use BeanUtils.copyProperties() to copy > the values -- with appropriate conversions -- in your Action that accepts > the form. You know that you won't get conversion errors because they > would have been caught in the validation checks that preceed calling the > Action. > > > Thanks > > Puneet Agarwal > > Craig McClanahan > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
