I think it's a generally accepted practice that separating data from logic is a "Good Thing"(tm).
BAL
From: "Hookom, Jacob" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: 'Struts Users Mailing List' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Theoretical debate Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 14:57:31 -0500
I completely agree with what Crysalis is trying to push, also a framework called VRaptor (vraptor.org) also pushes the same idea of moving away from the procedural weight that Struts promotes.
Look at JSF, do you have actions? No, JSF just updates your POJO beans and calls methods on them. Why have an ActionForm or have to create all of these Actions that are simply getter/setter adapters? Please don't be too quick to retort to my supposed anti-struts mindset, but there are other frameworks out there that allow direct interaction with my business objects and don't require a heck of a lot of framework specific coding.
---
Example:
To have a multi-page form with JSF, I just create a bean that sits in
Session scope that has a series of getters and setters. JSF will also allow
me to pre-set relationships to other objects at creation time. Then, when
I'm ready to submit the multi-page form, I just put in the jsp
#{myFormBean.submit}. No action mappings, only a managed bean entry.
With Struts, I have to create an ActionForm objects (can't just use a business object I already have), and then create separate Action objects to manipulate that ActionForm.
---
-Jacob Hookom
-----Original Message----- From: Frank Zammetti [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 2:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Theoretical debate
Last night I was Googling for something and I stumbled across the Crysalis framework. I was actualyl intrigued by the underlying premise of it and I wanted to see what others thought about it.
In a nutshell and in my own words, Crysalis (http://chrysalis.sourceforge.net/) has the underlying idea that when you develop in most MVC frameworks, Struts chief among them, you are actually doing something unnatural and in a way at odds with basic OOP design.
Think about a shopping cart example... If you were going to write that in straight Java, not for the web or anything, how would you model it? Most likely you would have a ShoppingCart class with a number of methods in it, things like addItem(), removeItem(), totalPrice(), etc.
In Struts, although you aren't FORCED to, what you GENERALLY do is create three different Action classes like addItemAction, removeItemAction and totalPriceAction, and each is called in response to a form submission.
But isn't it kind of odd that your object model isn't following what you probably think in your head is the right way, i.e., one class with multiple related methods? Proper encapsulation and all that jazz, right?
Well, Crysalis does just that. It's controller elements are regular Java classes with multiple methods. What you wind up with is something that resembles Remote Procedure Calls instead of numerous servlets as controllers.
In other words, you would create the ShoppingCart object just as I described
above, with all three methods. Then, when you submit a form, the action is something along the lines of "ShoppingCart.addItem.cmd". ShoppingCart is the class to execute, addItem the method and cmd is a suffix to direct the request, just like extensions in your Struts apps map requests to ActionServlet.
The elements of the submitted form are treated as the parameters of the method being called, making it rather elegant.
I haven't gotten into any real detail on Crysalis, but I was interested in
getting other peoples' thoughts on the underlying principal (which I *THINK*
I've stated properly!). It was rather interesting to me because I'd never
reall considered looking at it that way, and certainly it's not the way you
typically approach a Struts-based application. It was also interesting to
me because I've for about four years now been preaching here at work that we
should write our applications as a collection of services that are executed
to form a coherent larger application, which is very much along the lines of
this (so I guess I actually HAVE looked at it this way in a sense, but not exactly).
Any thoughts?
Frank
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