Tutorials : The Power of Three - Eclipse, Tomcat, and Struts :

The Power of Three - Eclipse, Tomcat, and Struts

by Keld H. Hansen

Introduction

As a programmer it's important to be productive, and as any other craftsman you need good tools to be productive. In this article I'll present a set of tools, which can really help you get your job done. What's more, they're all free, open source, and well documented. I've been using these tools in several real-life projects and have found that they often outdo expensive development tools. This is because they're simple to install, simple to use, reliable and have good performance.

The names of the tools are Eclipse, Tomcat, and Struts.

You've probably heard about all of them, and maybe you have used them in your work, but anyway: here's a short description of each:

• Eclipse is an IDE from eclipse.org, which can be used for programming in Java and many other programming languages.
• Tomcat is a J2EE web server from the Apache Jakarta project
• Struts is a framework--also from Apache Jakarta--for building MVC-type servlet applications

So, these tools are made for making web applications based on the servlet specification. They don't cover EJB's, since Tomcat is not an EJB-server, and standard Eclipse does not cover EJB's.

Eclipse has a project type for Java development, but strangely enough not for Java web application development. A Java web application is characterized by a special directory structure (war-file structure), and a set of specialized files: jsp-files, XML configuration files, servlets, etc. To fill this gap, a very nice Eclipse plug-in from sysdeo.com is at hand. It not only gives us the web application project but also a way of managing the Tomcat server from within Eclipse. Below we'll see how to install and use this plug-in.

Struts gives you a way of building modular, de-coupled web applications. How Struts is included in Eclipse is another topic that'll be covered later in this article.

Install Eclipse

The first thing to do is to install Eclipse. I've chosen to use version 3.0M4 even if a newer version, 3.0M6, exists. This is because the Sysdeo plug-in explicitly states that it supports 3.0M4. Be warned: Eclipse is a rather large download: 69.1 Mb! You either need a speedy connection or a lot of patience.

Installation however, is a breeze. Unzip the downloaded file, locate the eclipse.exe in the download folder, double- click and you're off.

If you're not familiar with Eclipse, then use the built in documentation to get started. Select "Help" in the menu bar, and then "Help Contents".

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