Below are the steps of a possible solution for using commons-chain with Struts, having the Catalog configured via Spring.

If you only need a single Catalog, you can write one which assumes that the name of any command is the name of a Spring bean, and looks up the Command using the Spring ApplicationContext.

If you need multiple catalogs, you would want an implementation of the CatalogFactory class which can wire together beans from Spring. This should be pretty simple, but no code is provided here yet.

Below is a possible implementation of the single-Catalog solution.

public class SpringCatalog implements Catalog,ApplicationContextAware {
	 
	 private ApplicationContext appContext;
	 
	 public SpringCatalog() {
		 System.out.println("Instantiating Spring Catalog..");
	 }
	 
	 public void addCommand(String name, Command command) {
		 // does nothing here..
	 }
	 
	 public Command getCommand(String name) {
		 return (Command)appContext.getBean(name);
	 }

       public Iterator getNames() {
		  Map commands = new HashMap();
		  try {
			  commands = appContext.getBeansOfType(
			  		org.apache.commons.chain.Command.class,
					true,
					true);
		  } catch(Exception e) {
			  System.err.println("Error in retrieving command names..");
		  }
		  return commands.keySet().iterator();
	  }
	  
	 public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext ctx)
	  	throws ApplicationContextException, BeansException {
		  appContext = ctx;
	 }
 }
  • Declare your Catalog class and commands in your spring configuration file (usually it is applicationContext.xml).
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN" "http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">
<beans>
	
	<!-- ========================= GENERAL DEFINITIONS ========================= -->

  

	<!-- Configurer that replaces ${...} placeholders with values from properties files -->
	<!-- (in this case, mail and JDBC related properties) -->

     <bean id="persistenceManager" class="com.myapp.strutschain.bean.PersistenceManager"/>
     <bean name="catalog" class="com.myapp.strutschain.core.SpringCatalog"/>
     <bean name="login" class="org.apache.commons.chain.impl.ChainBase">
                <constructor-arg>
                        <list>
                                <ref bean="firstCmd"/>
                                <ref bean="secondCmd"/>
                        </list>
                </constructor-arg>
      </bean>
     <bean name="firstCmd"
	    class="com.myapp.strutschain.command.PreLoginCommand"/>
    
     <bean name="secondCmd"
 	    class="com.myapp.strutschain.command.LoginCommand">
		<property name="persistenceManager">
			<ref local="persistenceManager"/>
		</property>
     </bean>	
</beans>
  • Declare the Spring plugIn in your struts configuration file
<plug-in className="org.springframework.web.struts.ContextLoaderPlugIn">
    <set-property property="contextConfigLocation"
                    value="/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml"/>
</plug-in>
  • Write an Action class servers as base to retrieve commands
public class CommandAction extends ActionSupport {
    
    protected static String SUCCESS = "success";

    protected Command getCommand(ActionMapping mapping,
                                 ActionForm form,
                                 HttpServletRequest request,
                                 HttpServletResponse response)
            throws Exception {
        Catalog catalog = (Catalog) getWebApplicationContext().getBean("catalog");

        // Marco uses the mapping's name, but I would suggest that using the path or the parameter are more appropriate,
        // or in Struts 1.3, you could use the mapping's command property directly. 
        // The "name" property is used to identify a form bean associated with the action mapping, and may not be 
        // appropriately unique for your business logic.  -- JG
	 String name = mapping.getName();
	 System.out.println("Retrieving command for action"+ name);
        Command command = catalog.getCommand(name);
        return command;
    }

    protected Context getContext(ActionMapping mapping,
                                 ActionForm form,
                                 HttpServletRequest request,
                                 HttpServletResponse response)
            throws Exception {
        ServletContext application = request.getSession()
                .getServletContext();
        Context context = new ServletWebContext(
                application, request, response);
	
        return context;
    }
    
    protected ActionForward findLocation(ActionMapping mapping,
            boolean stop) {
        if (stop) return mapping.getInputForward(); // Something failed
        return mapping.findForward(SUCCESS);
    }

    public ActionForward execute(
            ActionMapping mapping,
            ActionForm form,
            HttpServletRequest request,
            HttpServletResponse response)
            throws Exception {
        Command command = getCommand(mapping, form, request, response);
        Context context = getContext(mapping, form, request, response);
        boolean stop = command.execute(context);
        ActionForward location = findLocation(mapping, stop);
        return location;
    }
}
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