If you don't have ActionForms, then where will be the form data that the users fill up go?? You'll have to manually extract all the request data from the request object. ActionForms transfer all the data themselves. Coming to validation, having validation logic in execute method isn't a very good idea. Validation logic should be reusable. Also if you validate everything inside the execute method, you'll have to manually send the request back to the input page if validation fails. I don't like the idea of ActionForms too much, but if you are using
Struts 1.x, then you have to use them to get form data automatically...