>>I would use the Request for such a List and wouldn't even bother putting it 
>>in the ActionForm 

But that of course doesn't make the list persist. Most frameworks heavily rely 
on the user session
and I am now a strong believer that's the better way of doing things. I wonder 
if allowing the
developer to be concerned with page/request/session/application scope creates a 
whole problem in
itself; this problem is so unique to Struts and JSP development, but not a 
thought with Tapestry
or JSF. 

If I remember correctly, I know you promoted a solution of using the validate() 
method of
containing those populated lists. That's on the right track but I think a 
misuse of the validate()
method. Thankfully it's corrected by Struts 2.0/Webwork by a prepare() method 
that is called
before executing mostly everything else. I would like to see this ported into 
1.3 because with the
ComposableRequestProcessor, you can slam in any cool customization into the 
processing chain!

I try to keep my ActionForm with 'only' properties that the user can edit - 
nothing more. 

Ahhhhh! You and I really chatted this up a year ago. I was gung-ho for this 
method, but no longer.
I was a very die hard proponent of this but I could only go so far with it; the 
problem was it
made no logical sense to contain some data in the form (which was then put into 
the request) and
then some data in the request. Both end up in the request, so why separate the 
two? It did not
allow me to encapsulate my data --- and it created a very difficult nightmare 
to track down which
request attributes were appropriate for a given form. So in response, I 
concluded this method was
good up to a point, but everything in the action form suited more complex cases.

This is my opinion based on experience. Sometimes I just have to travel down 
the road far enough
to see how far the solution will take me -- some solutions are 20 gallon cars, 
others 30, 50. What
seemed like a good solution back then turned out to be the best at that time; 
now I think
everything in the form is a better performing car.

Paul


        
                
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