Not for Starter but OK for refreshing your Struts memory

I wondered why the book had so many typos in numerous examples of programs and configuration files listed on the book. It really led me to have a second thought about the quality of this book. Despite many editorial errors, the author did a good job on explaining the "how-it-works" of different parts in the Struts framework with using a step-by-step approach. The book provided a rich explanation on the logical flow of ActionServlet, Preprocessor, PlugIn, and form submisson, etc. Especially in the chapter of "Working with the Validator", it addressed the mechanics and usage of validator in a decent detail. On the other hands, the chapter about 'Tiles' was weak, no pictures no diagram no sample screenshot at all but only lists of source codes with little descriptions. It's hard for readers to follow and visualize the look & feel on various layout samples described in the book. The last five chapters were about Struts taglib APIs, HTML taglib, Tiles taglib, Logic taglib, Template taglib, and Bean taglib. Do not expect detail description or usage examples. These chapters seemed to me only a kind of re-printing of the APIs from the Struts online documentation, and took like almost 100 pages, 1/4 of the whole book.

Overall, the book is okay if you've known Struts a bit before and just want to refresh your memory. If you're a Struts starter, try others.

(Reviewed by Otto Yuen, 12-Aug-2008)

Other Reviews

• Adequate
• Not for Starter but OK for refreshing your Struts memory
• Online Tutorials teach better than this book
• It had potential
• For Developers who need to learn - this is the one