Programming Jakarta Struts By Chuck Cavaness - Part6

Couple Of Days i started reading Programming Jakarta Struts By Chuck Cavaness.

Nice book written by Chuck Cavaness.

I wanted to share few quotations found from the next 2 chapters(11-12) from this book.

1) The Validator depends on several other packages to function properly, and the most important of these is the Jakarta ORO package. The ORO package contains functionality for regular expressions, performing substitutions, and text splitting, among other utilities. The libraries were originally developed by ORO, Inc. and donated to the Apache Software Foundation. Earlier versions of the Validator framework depended on a different regular expression package, called Regexp, which is also a Jakarta project. However, ORO was considered the more complete of the two, and the Validator that is included with Struts 1.1 now depends on the ORO package.

2) Both the ValidatorActionForm and DynaValidatorActionForm match on the action mapping rather than the form name. That is, instead of matching on the form name in the name attribute of the form element, you can use the path attribute of the action element. This allows the same form to be used for different action mappings, where each action mapping may depend on only certain form fields to be validated and the others to be left alone.

3) Although the Validator was originally designed to work with the Struts framework, it can be used to perform generic validation on any JavaBean. There are several steps that must be performed before the framework can be used outside of Struts.

4) Although the Validator is not dependent on the Struts framework, a considerable amount of work has been done inside of Struts to make it easier to use the Validator. This behavior will need to be replicated for your application if you plan to use the Validator without Struts.

5) Internationalization (I18N), simply stated, is the process of designing your software ahead of time to support multiple languages and regions, so that you don't have to go back and re-engineer your applications every time a new language or country needs to be supported. An application that is said to support internationalization has the following characteristics:

6) A locale is a region (usually geographic, but not necessarily so) that shares customs, culture, and language. Applications that are written for a single locale are commonly referred to as myopic. Localization (L10N) is the process of adapting your application, which has been properly internationalized, to a specific locale. For applications where I18N support hadn't been planned or built in, this usually means changes to text, images, and messages that are embedded within the source code. After the changes are applied, the source code may need to be recompiled. Imagine doing this time and time again for each new locale you have to support!

7) The java.util.Locale class is undeniably the most important I18N class in the Java library. Almost all of the support for internationalization and localization in or around the Java language relies on this class.

About the Author

Chuck Cavaness is a graduate from Georgia Tech with degrees in computer engineering and computer science, has built Java-based enterprise systems in the healthcare, banking, and B2B sectors. Working at an Internet company to design and develop software architecture, Chuck has spent many frustrating hours figuring out the dos and the don'ts of web applications. With each enterprise system he's developed, Chuck has learned several valuable lessons about building "real-world" web applications, information that he's made available to developers who haven't had the opportunity to work on large systems.

Chuck is the co-author of Special Edition Using Java 1.3 and Special Edition Using EJB 2.0, both available from QUE.