Minimal Struts Tag Library

Like the Struts 2 framework but prefer to use JSTL-style tags and expressions in your JSPs? The Minimal Struts Tag Library gives you a simple, fast alternative for the four main form elements.

Usage

Add the taglib to your JSP:

<%@ taglib uri="http://www.jiglu.com/taglibs/mstaglib" prefix="ms" %>

The tags are almost exact analogues of the HTML elements - and the Struts framework's own tags:

<ms:input type="type" name="field" />

<ms:textarea name="field" />

<ms:select name="field">
	<ms:option value="value">Option</ms:option>
</ms:select>

The name attribute is required and used to retrieve the appropriate value from the action bean. Like the Struts taglib you can use list fields:

<ms:input type="text" name="list[0]" />

or map fields:

<ms:input type="text" name="map['key']" />

For the <ms:input> tag, the type attribute is required.

For the <ms:option> tag, whether the option is selected will be tested again the value attribute if present and the body text if not.

If the errorClass attribute is specified and the corresponding Struts action implements ValidationAware then if there is a field error present for the field with that name the class attribute value will be replaced by the errorClass attribute value.

<ms:textarea name="field" class="address" errorClass="address error" />

There is special handling of the disabled and required attributes. If a JSTL expression evaluates to true or the attribute value is set to disabled / required as appropriate then the attribute will be included in the rendered tag.

<ms:input type="text" name="email" required="required" disabled="${contactMethod != 'email'}" />

All other attributes are passed through to the rendered element as-is.

Installation

Just drop mstaglib-(version).jar into your WEB-INF/lib directory. It's not yet in the Maven repository.

The tag library is compiled against Struts 6.0.3 but should work fine against most versions as it only imports two classes that have (so far) remained stable between versions.

If you change the acceptParamNames regular expression for ParametersInterceptor in struts.xml then you will need to change the ACCEPTED_PATTERN regular expression in the ActionUtils class to match and recompile.