Struts 2: Custom display of error messages

[Dave Alvarado]

Hi,

I'm migrating my Struts 1 app to Struts 2. In my Struts 2 app, I have an interceptor class that is meant to validate my error fields. It has this method to add action errors ...

private void addActionError(ActionInvocation invocation, String message) {
Object action = invocation.getAction();
if(action instanceof ValidationAware) {
((ValidationAware) action).addActionError(message);
}
}

How do I display these on my JSP? On my target JSP, I have this Struts 1 code (which is obviously invalid in Struts 2):

<logic:messagesPresent>
<div id="errorBlock" style="display: block;" class="module error hidden">

The following error has occurred:

<html:errors></html:errors>

<div class="clear"></div>
</div>
</logic:messagesPresent>


Thanks, - Dave

[David Newton]

<s:actionerror/> and <s:fielderror/>.

There's already validation and workflow interceptors--are you using your own?

[Dave Alvarado]

Yes, I created my own because I have to validate the field using a custom algorithm. Here is what I have in my struts.xml file, but certainly let me know the correct way to do this if this is not it ...

<interceptors>
<interceptor name="AccountsInterceptor" class="com.myco.regui.struts.accounts.AccountsInterceptor"></interceptor>
<interceptor-stack name="AccountsInterceptorStack">
<interceptor-ref name="prepare"/>
<interceptor-ref name="modelDriven"/>
<interceptor-ref name="exception"/>
<interceptor-ref name="servletConfig"/>
<interceptor-ref name="checkbox"/>
<interceptor-ref name="params"/>
<interceptor-ref name="AccountsInterceptor"></interceptor-ref>
</interceptor-stack>
</interceptors>
<default-interceptor-ref name="AccountsInterceptorStack"></default-interceptor-ref>

Thanks, - Dave

[David Newton]

That'll work fine.

Really, though, there's no reason to do that via a custom interceptor--you can write your own validators and plug them in to the existing system or use the validation logic in an action's validate() method where it'll work along with the existing framework validators. I don't know your needs, of course, but I have yet to encounter a situation where I had to write an interceptor just to do custom validation.

[Dave Alvarado]

Actually I want to try the way you suggested, but was curious ... do you mean adding a "validate" method to the action class with a String return type?

Thanks, - Dave

[David Newton]

No, I mean adding a void validate() method to the action class, which is the signature expected by the interface.

If it's application-wide validation it'd be cleaner to create a validator.

[Dave Alvarado]

To put some closure to this thread, Im using s:actionerror, per David's suggestion ...

<div id="errorBlock" style="display: block;" class="module error ">
    <p>The following error has occurred:</p>
    <s:actionerror id="errorList"></s:actionerror>
	<div class="clear"></div>
</div>

Thing is, I only want to display the above if there are action errors. If not, I would prefer that none of the above HTML be visible. How do I do this?

Thanks, - Dave

[David Newton]

<s:if test="hasActionErrors()">...</...>

The API docs might be helpful to you.