RE: Controller Servlets?

My two cents:

- Struts (for the essential web flow stuff)
- Spring (for the wiring of layers using dependency injection as well
data access integration)
- Hibernate (for data access)
- SiteMesh (beats Struts templates and Tiles hands-down IMO)
- JSP with JSTL and EL (maybe a little Google Ajax)

Spring, Struts and Hibernate all work very nicely together.  I've not
tried Springs web flow but I understand it's just adequate.  Using EL
and JSTL in JSP's is very simple and straight-forward.  Replacing
bean:writes with EL and logix:xxx with JSTL cleans up JSPs a lot.

If you really want to step out on the edge then check out JBoss Seam
with JSF.  There's also Struts for JSF although I've heard nothing about
it - good or bad.

Ron Monson
EDS - Federal Law Enforcement
Systems Architecture & Development
Dept. Of Homeland Security, SEVIS Project
800 K St. NW, Suite 830, Washington, DC 20001

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Matt White
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 1:47 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Controller Servlets?

Help! I've been stuck in a Servlet 2.2 / JSP 1.1 world!

The project I've been working on for years has been based on JSP 1.1
(because that's what was current at the time it began), and it's
finally drawing to a close. It worked great, but now it's time to move
onto something else.

I have a chance to start over fresh with a new project, and I'd really
like to use something that's a bit more up to date than what I've been
using up till now. Since I'd fallen so far behind the curve, I've been
taking time to research what more modern servlet and JSP offerings are
(versions 2.4 and 2.0, respectively). The "Model 2" concept is new to
me, but I've read enough about it now that I see the advantages that
it offers - that is, a controller servlet checking data and passing
requests onto various JSP pages.

I've looked around at the various frameworks for this, and Struts is
the one that comes up the most often... but when I look at what Struts
offers, it seems like there's a lot of overlap between Struts and
JSP/JSTL these days. Frankly, I'd rather stick with Resin's JSTL
because of previous bad experiences with Apache software - in order to
use one library, you have to include a plethora of others, each with
their own logger and other oddities. (I'd guess it works great if
you're using 100% Apache software... but seeing as how this is a Resin
list and not a Tomcat one...) However, if the advantages outweigh the
disadvantages, I'd get used to it.

Here's my question - if you were able to start over on a web project,
which framework (if any) would you go with? Is writing my own
controller servlet and then making gratuitous use of the features in
JSP/JSTL an insane idea?

Checking the archives, this topic came up before sometime in 2002...
the web framework landscape has changed considerably since then.
(AJAX, etc)

Thanks for your thoughts in advance!

- Matt