Struts Interview Questions

What is MVC?
Model-View-Controller (MVC) is a design pattern put together to help control change. MVC decouples interface from business logic and data.
Model : The model contains the core of the application's functionality. The model encapsulates the state of the application. Sometimes the only functionality it contains is state. It knows nothing about the view or controller.
View: The view provides the presentation of the model. It is the look of the application. The view can access the model getters, but it has no knowledge of the setters. In addition, it knows nothing about the controller. The view should be notified when changes to the model occur.
Controller:The controller reacts to the user input. It creates and sets the model.
2.What is a framework?
A framework is made up of the set of classes which allow us to use a library in a best possible way for a specific requirement.
3.What is Struts framework?
Struts framework is an open-source framework for developing the web applications in Java EE, based on MVC-2 architecture. It uses and extends the Java Servlet API. Struts is robust architecture and can be used for the development of application of any size. Struts framework makes it much easier to design scalable, reliable Web applications with Java.
4.What are the components of Struts?
Struts components can be categorize into Model, View and Controller:
Model: Components like business logic /business processes and data are the part of model.
View: HTML, JSP are the view components.
Controller: Action Servlet of Struts is part of Controller components which works as front controller to handle all the requests.
5.What are the core classes of the Struts Framework?
Struts is a set of cooperating classes, servlets, and JSP tags that make up a reusable MVC 2 design.
JavaBeans components for managing application state and behavior.
Event-driven development (via listeners as in traditional GUI development).
Pages that represent MVC-style views; pages reference view roots via the JSF component tree.
6.What is ActionServlet?
ActionServlet is a simple servlet which is the backbone of all Struts applications. It is the main Controller component that handles client requests and determines which Action will process each received request. It serves as an Action factory – creating specific Action classes based on user’s request.

7.What is role of ActionServlet?
ActionServlet performs the role of Controller:
Process user requests
Determine what the user is trying to achieve according to the request
Pull data from the model (if necessary) to be given to the appropriate view,
Select the proper view to respond to the user
Delegates most of this grunt work to Action classes
Is responsible for initialization and clean-up of resources

8.What is the ActionForm?
ActionForm is javabean which represents the form inputs containing the request parameters from the View referencing the Action bean.

9.What are the important methods of ActionForm?
The important methods of ActionForm are : validate() & reset().

10.Describe validate() and reset() methods ?
validate() : Used to validate properties after they have been populated; Called before FormBean is handed to Action. Returns a collection of ActionError as ActionErrors. Following is the method signature for the validate() method.

public ActionErrors validate(ActionMapping mapping,HttpServletRequest request)

reset(): reset() method is called by Struts Framework with each request that uses the defined ActionForm. The purpose of this method is to reset all of the ActionForm's data members prior to the new request values being set.
public void reset() {}




11.What is ActionMapping?
Action mapping contains all the deployment information for a particular Action bean. This class is to determine where the results of the Action will be sent once its processing is complete.

12.How is the Action Mapping specified ?
We can specify the action mapping in the configuration file called struts-config.xml. Struts framework creates ActionMapping object from configuration element of struts-config.xml file








13.What is role of Action Class?
An Action Class performs a role of an adapter between the contents of an incoming HTTP request and the corresponding business logic that should be executed to process this request.

14.In which method of Action class the business logic is executed ?
In the execute() method of Action class the business logic is executed.

public ActionForward execute(
ActionMapping mapping,
ActionForm form,
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws Exception ;

execute() method of Action class:
Perform the processing required to deal with this request
Update the server-side objects (Scope variables) that will be used to create the next page of the user interface
Return an appropriate ActionForward object

15.What design patterns are used in Struts?







Struts is based on model 2 MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. Struts controller uses the command design pattern and the action classes use the adapter design pattern. The process() method of the RequestProcessor uses the template method design pattern. Struts also implement the following J2EE design patterns.
Service to Worker
Dispatcher View
Composite View (Struts Tiles)
Front Controller
View Helper
Synchronizer Token
16.Can we have more than one struts-config.xml file for a single Struts application?
Yes, we can have more than one struts-config.xml for a single Struts application. They can be configured as follows:



action
org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet

config/WEB-INF/struts-config.xml,
/WEB-INF/struts-admin.xml,
/WEB-INF/struts-config-forms.xml

.....

17.What is the directory structure of Struts application?
The directory structure of Struts application :



18.What is the difference between session scope and request scope when saving formbean ?
when the scope is request,the values of formbean would be available for the current request.
when the scope is session,the values of formbean would be available throughout the session.
19.What are the important tags of struts-config.xml ?
The five important sections are:

20.What are the different kinds of actions in Struts?
The different kinds of actions in Struts are:
ForwardAction
IncludeAction
DispatchAction
LookupDispatchAction
SwitchAction
21.What is DispatchAction?
The DispatchAction class is used to group related actions into one class. Using this class, you can have a method for each logical action compared than a single execute method. The DispatchAction dispatches to one of the logical actions represented by the methods. It picks a method to invoke based on an incoming request parameter. The value of the incoming parameter is the name of the method that the DispatchAction will invoke.
22.How to use DispatchAction?
To use the DispatchAction, follow these steps :
Create a class that extends DispatchAction (instead of Action)
In a new class, add a method for every function you need to perform on the service – The method has the same signature as the execute() method of an Action class.
Do not override execute() method – Because DispatchAction class itself provides execute() method.
Add an entry to struts-config.xml

DispatchAction Example »
23.What is the use of ForwardAction?
The ForwardAction class is useful when you’re trying to integrate Struts into an existing application that uses Servlets to perform business logic functions. You can use this class to take advantage of the Struts controller and its functionality, without having to rewrite the existing Servlets. Use ForwardAction to forward a request to another resource in your application, such as a Servlet that already does business logic processing or even another JSP page. By using this predefined action, you don’t have to write your own Action class. You just have to set up the struts-config file properly to use ForwardAction.

24.What is IncludeAction?
The IncludeAction class is useful when you want to integrate Struts into an application that uses Servlets. Use the IncludeAction class to include another resource in the response to the request being processed.

25.What is the difference between ForwardAction and IncludeAction?
The difference is that you need to use the IncludeAction only if the action is going to be included by another action or jsp. Use ForwardAction to forward a request to another resource in your application, such as a Servlet that already does business logic processing or even another JSP page.

26.What is LookupDispatchAction?
The LookupDispatchAction is a subclass of DispatchAction. It does a reverse lookup on the resource bundle to get the key and then gets the method whose name is associated with the key into the Resource Bundle.

27.What is the use of LookupDispatchAction?
LookupDispatchAction is useful if the method name in the Action is not driven by its name in the front end, but by the Locale independent key into the resource bundle. Since the key is always the same, the LookupDispatchAction shields your application from the side effects of I18N.

28.What is difference between LookupDispatchAction and DispatchAction?
The difference between LookupDispatchAction and DispatchAction is that the actual method that gets called in LookupDispatchAction is based on a lookup of a key value instead of specifying the method name directly.

29.What is SwitchAction?
The SwitchAction class provides a means to switch from a resource in one module to another resource in a different module. SwitchAction is useful only if you have multiple modules in your Struts application. The SwitchAction class can be used as is, without extending.

30.What if element has declaration with same name as global forward?
In this case the global forward is not used. Instead the element’s takes precendence
31.What is DynaActionForm?

A specialized subclass of ActionForm that allows the creation of form beans with dynamic sets of properties (configured in configuration file), without requiring the developer to create a Java class for each type of form bean.

32.What are the steps need to use DynaActionForm?
Using a DynaActionForm instead of a custom subclass of ActionForm is relatively straightforward. You need to make changes in two places:
In struts-config.xml: change your form-bean to be an

form-bean name="loginForm"type="org.apache.struts.action.DynaActionForm"
form-property name="userName" type="java.lang.String"
form-property name="password" type="java.lang.String"
form-bean

In your Action subclass that uses your form bean:
import org.apache.struts.action.DynaActionForm
downcast the ActionForm parameter in execute() to a DynaActionForm
access the form fields with get(field) rather than getField()


import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import org.apache.struts.action.Action;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForward;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionMapping;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionMessage;
import org.apache.struts.action.ActionMessages;


import org.apache.struts.action.DynaActionForm;

public class DynaActionFormExample extends Action {
public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping, ActionForm form,
HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
throws Exception {
DynaActionForm loginForm = (DynaActionForm) form;
ActionMessages errors = new ActionMessages();
if (((String) loginForm.get("userName")).equals("")) {
errors.add("userName", new ActionMessage(
"error.userName.required"));
}
if (((String) loginForm.get("password")).equals("")) {
errors.add("password", new ActionMessage(
"error.password.required"));
}
...........

33.How to display validation errors on jsp page?
tag displays all the errors. iterates over ActionErrors request attribute.

34.What are the various Struts tag libraries?
The various Struts tag libraries are:
HTML Tags
Bean Tags
Logic Tags
Template Tags
Nested Tags
Tiles Tags
35.What is the use of logic:iterate?
repeats the nested body content of this tag over a specified collection.


table border=1
logic:iterate id="customer" name="customers"

bean:write name="customer" property="firstName"
bean:write name="customer" property="lastName"
bean:write name="customer" property="address"


logic:iterate
table
36.What are differences between and
: is used to retrive keyed values from resource bundle. It also supports the ability to include parameters that can be substituted for defined placeholders in the retrieved string.

: is used to retrieve and print the value of the bean property. has no body.


37.How the exceptions are handled in struts?
Exceptions in Struts are handled in two ways:
Programmatic exception handling : Explicit try/catch blocks in any code that can throw exception. It works well when custom value (i.e., of variable) needed when error occurs.
Declarative exception handling :You can either define global-exceptions handling tags in your struts-config.xml or define the exception handling tags within tag. It works well when custom page needed when error occurs. This approach applies only to exceptions thrown by Actions.

global-exceptions
exception key="some.key"
type="java.lang.NullPointerException"
path="/WEB-INF/errors/null.jsp"/>

global-exceptions
or
exception key="some.key"
type="package.SomeException"
path="/WEB-INF/somepage.jsp"/>
38.What is difference between ActionForm and DynaActionForm?
An ActionForm represents an HTML form that the user interacts with over one or more pages. You will provide properties to hold the state of the form with getters and setters to access them. Whereas, using DynaActionForm there is no need of providing properties to hold the state. Instead these properties and their type are declared in the struts-config.xml
The DynaActionForm bloats up the Struts config file with the xml based definition. This gets annoying as the Struts Config file grow larger.
The DynaActionForm is not strongly typed as the ActionForm. This means there is no compile time checking for the form fields. Detecting them at runtime is painful and makes you go through redeployment.
ActionForm can be cleanly organized in packages as against the flat organization in the Struts Config file.
ActionForm were designed to act as a Firewall between HTTP and the Action classes, i.e. isolate and encapsulate the HTTP request parameters from direct use in Actions. With DynaActionForm, the property access is no different than using request.getParameter( .. ).
DynaActionForm construction at runtime requires a lot of Java Reflection (Introspection) machinery that can be avoided.

39.How can we make message resources definitions file available to the Struts framework environment?
We can make message resources definitions file (properties file) available to Struts framework environment by adding this file to struts-config.xml.


40.What is the life cycle of ActionForm?
The lifecycle of ActionForm invoked by the RequestProcessor is as follows:
Retrieve or Create Form Bean associated with Action
"Store" FormBean in appropriate scope (request or session)
Reset the properties of the FormBean
Populate the properties of the FormBean
Validate the properties of the FormBean
Pass FormBean to Action

Simple Hibernate Example with ANT script

The Following Example is shows how to save data into database for that you required the follwoing components
1.hibernate mapping file(hbm.xml)
2. simple PlainOldJavaObject (POJO) class with setters and Getters
3.required jar files for hibernate nad database driver
4.Ant script to run the program
5. simple Class with main() method

1.First i have Person table in database with the following fields
sql-query for creating table: create table person (personid int primary key,name varchar2(30),age int, weight int);
2. creating person.hbm.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?/>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC
"-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN"
http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd/>
<hibernate-mapping package="com.siva">
<class name="Person" table="person">
<id name="personId" type="java.lang.Long">
<generator class="increment"/>
<id/>
<property name="name" type="string"/>
<property name="age" type="java.lang.Long"/>
<property name="weight" type="java.lang.Long"/>
<class/>
<hibernate-mapping/>
In the above hbm file you have id generator class="increment" for id you no need to insert explicit value hibernate it self give id to you .
3. simple POJO class of Person

package com.siva;
public class Person
{
private Long personId;
private String name;
private Long age;
private Long weight;
public Long getPersonId() {
return personId;
}
public void setPersonId(Long personId) {
this.personId = personId;
}

public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public Long getAge() {
return age;
}
public void setAge(Long age) {
this.age = age;
}

public Long getWeight() {
return weight;
}
public void setWeight(Long weight) {
this.weight = weight;
}
}
Now for hibernate we have all are in place except configuration which database we need to point and what is driver for that so writing another xml file for this we mention all this in The following class itself
4. SimpleHibernateTest class as following
package com.siva;
import org.hibernate.Session;import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;import org.hibernate.Transaction;import org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration;import org.hibernate.cfg.Environment;
public class SimpleHibernateTest
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
Transaction tx = null;
try
{
Configuration cfg = new Configuration();
cfg.setProperty(Environment.AUTOCOMMIT ,"true" );
cfg.setProperty (Environment.DRIVER, "oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver");
cfg.setProperty(Environment.DIALECT, "org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle9Dialect");
cfg.setProperty(Environment.USER, "database username");
cfg.setProperty(Environment.PASS,"database password");
cfg.setProperty(Environment.URL, "jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:SID");
//here SID is database name it is xe for oracle 10G
System.out.println("connected to databse " + cfg.getProperty(Environment.URL));
cfg.addFile("person.hbm.xml");
Person p = new Person();
p.setName("siva");
p.setAge(26L); p.setWeight(63L);
SessionFactory sessionFactory = cfg.buildSessionFactory();
Session session = sessionFactory.openSession();
tx = session.beginTransaction();
session.save(p);
System.out.println("successfully save the record in database");
tx.commit();
session.close();
} //try end
catch(Exception ex)
{
ex.printStackTrace();
tx.rollback();
}//catch end
}//main method end
}//class end
Now we run this program in two ways
1. we run this through command prompt like noramal program
javac com.siva.SimpleHibernateTest.java
but we need required jar files so all jar files we need to keep in classpath
or if we using eclipse no need to bother about class path you can all jar files to build path of
project properties.
2. writing ANT file through that we can run the program
if we want to run the program through ANT we need ANT bin directory to path.
the follwoing ANT XML file

<project name="test" default="compile">
<property name="sourcedir" value="${basedir}"/>
<property name="targetdir" value="${basedir}/bin"/>
<property file="build.properties"/>
<path id="libraries">
<fileset dir="${librarydir}">
<include name="*.jar">
<fileset>
<fileset dir="${OraLib}">
<include name="*.jar">
</fileset>
</path>
<target name="clean">
<delete dir="${targetdir}"/>
<mkdir dir="${targetdir}"/>
</target>
<target name="compile" depends="clean, copy-resources">
<javac srcdir="${sourcedir}"
destdir="${targetdir}"
classpathref="libraries"/>
</target>
<target name="copy-resources">
<copy todir="${targetdir}">
< fileset dir="${sourcedir}">
<exclude name="**/*.java"/>
</fileset>
</copy>
</target>
<target name="run" depends="compile">
<java fork="true" classname="com.siva.SimpleHibernateTest" classpathref="libraries">
<classpath path="${targetdir}"/>
</java>
</target>
</project>

In the above build.xml file there is one propety file=build.properties
this is for to give the location of jar files
where your hibernate jar files and database jar fiels
like the following
librarydir = C:/Hibernate Training/hibernate-3.1.2/hibernate-3.1/lib
OraLib = C:/oracle/ora90/jdbc/lib
After completing the above steps
just locate where is your build.xml file
for eg: c:\test\build.xml
come to command prompt and type like the following
c:\test> ANT
automatically it will compile because in your nat file you written Default as compile
once successful compilation you need to rubn for that
in the command prompt type the following
c:\test>ANT run
it will executs and insert the data into database.
This is the simple Hibernate example to start to learn hibernate.

Java Access specifiers

Hi,
in java there is one more interesting concept about access specifiers
the following four access speciers are there in java
private
default (no access specifier keep blank)
protected
public
Now the explanation as below with example
Private
the private access specifier for only with in the class accessible not other than class
example
public class Person
{
private String name;
}
class Employee extends Person
{
public String helloString()
{
return name; // here it will show compilation error Person.name is not visible because
private access specifier used in Person class for name
}

}
public
we used this specifier variables, methods any where in any class
in other packages also we can use this variables and methods
example
package com.test;
public class Person
{
public String name = "siva";
}
package com.test1;
import com.test.Person;
public class Person extends Person
{
public String helloString()
{
return name;
}
}
if we take this scenario it will work fine here one more concept you need to know
Person class is extending Person class only why it is not showing exception
Because one Person class in one package
another Person class in another package
so public access specifier you can use any package any class you need to extend that classes
accordingly.
default(if you are not specifing any access specier it is default)
this access is package level access
example
package com.test
public Class Person
{
String name = "siva";
public static void main(String args[])
{
Employee e = new Employee()
System.out.println("Name is "+e.getPersonDetails());
}
}
class Employee extends Person
{
public String getPersonDetails()
{
return name;
}
}
in this Example you need not identify one more concept.
in one package two classes are there but one class having public one is having nothing
in any package accepts only one public class
protected
one of most important concept for interviews
suppose we have two packages
1 com.test;
2 com.test1;
package com.test; having one class with protected method
package com.test1;
two class one class not overriding protected method directly using that method.
now the second class in com.test1 package is extending the same package class
the protected method is available only for first class of in second package i.e com.test1
not for second class
if you are try to access that method it will through exception.
the good example is Object class Clone method it is protected

Java Interview Concepts

Hi,
i am writing the java interview concepts i am not giving complete details i am giving the overall structure for glance when ever interview is there it is for quick reference i hope this might help
Object class Details
Object Class is Super class of all java classes
Object class having the following methods
public final Class getClass()
public int hashCode()
public boolean equals(Object obj)
protected Object clone() throws CloneNotSupportedException
public String toString()
public final void notify()
public final void notifyAll()
public final void wait(long timeout) throws InterruptedException
protected void finalize() throws Throwable
--------etc
you will get all the implementation details and some where most of the people
ask about these details some questions are
Can we override finalize() method
Ans: yes we can override this method when ever we know object is going out of memory
that type object we call in finalize method. this work automatically done by java only
it has good alogitihm to remove the object from memory.
notify(), wait(),notifyAll() are related to threads but why there are overrided in
Object Class
Ans: this methods not only for Threads it is external resources also that's why they are
overrided inside Object class
Difference b/n equal (==) operator and equals() method why should we override
Ans: in equals() method also they are using == operator only but when ever we want to
compare content of the two objects and both objects content has same but when
we compare it it return false so we should have to override equals() in our class.
Now i am going to explain methods in Objects class with examples
1. toString()
Syntax: public String toString()
{
return " ";
}
> in String class toString() method is overrided. when ever you are working with String class you no need to override toString() method.
example without overriding toString()
public class Person
{
private String mname;
public Person(String aname)
{
mname= aname;
}
public static void main(String args[])
{
Person p = new Person("siva");
System.out.println("Name is " + p);
or //toString() method is Object class method so it will come for
any class
System.out.println("Name is " + p.toString())
}

}
ANS: Name is ClassName i.e Person@some hexadecimal value
here hexa decimal value is where the object stored in memory area
so result is not correct we need correct result for that we have to override
toString() method
attach this code for Person class
public String toString()
{
return mname;
}
Now run the program you will get result as ----- Name is siva