Struts 2 - Environment Setup

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Our first task is to get a minimal Struts 2 application running. This chapter will guide you on how to prepare a development environment to start your work with Struts 2.

I assume that you already have JDK (5+), Tomcat and Eclipse installed on your machine. If you do not have these components installed, then follow the given steps on fast track −

Step 1 - Setup Java Development Kit (JDK)

You can download the latest version of SDK from Oracle's Java site − Java SE Downloads. You will find instructions for installing JDK in downloaded files, follow the given instructions to install and configure the setup. Finally, set PATH and JAVA_HOME environment variables to refer to the directory that contains java and javac, typically java_install_dir/bin and java_install_dir respectively.

If you are running Windows and installed the SDK in C:\jdk1.5.0_20, you should be inputting the following line in your C:\autoexec.bat file.

set PATH = C:\jdk1.5.0_20\bin;%PATH%
set JAVA_HOME = C:\jdk1.5.0_20

Alternatively, on Windows NT/2000/XP −

  • You can right-click on My Computer, Select Properties, then Advanced, then Environment Variables. Then, you would update the PATH value and press the OK button.

  • On Unix (Solaris, Linux, etc.), if the SDK is installed in /usr/local/jdk1.5.0_20 and you use the C shell, you would put the following into your .cshrc file.

On Unix (Solaris, Linux, etc.), if the SDK is installed in /usr/local/jdk1.5.0_20 and you use the C shell, you would put the following into your .cshrc file.

setenv PATH /usr/local/jdk1.5.0_20/bin:$PATH
setenv JAVA_HOME /usr/local/jdk1.5.0_20

Alternatively, if you use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) like Borland JBuilder, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, or Sun ONE Studio, compile and run a simple program to confirm that the IDE knows where you installed Java, otherwise do proper setup as per the given document of IDE.

Step 2 - Setup Apache Tomcat

You can download the latest version of Tomcat from https://tomcat.apache.org/. Once you downloaded the installation, unpack the binary distribution into a convenient location.

For example in C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.33 on windows, or /usr/local/apachetomcat-6.0.33 on Linux/Unix and create CATALINA_HOME environment variable pointing to these locations.

You can start Tomcat by executing the following commands on windows machine, or you can simply double click on startup.bat

%CATALINA_HOME%\bin\startup.bat
 
or
 
C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.33\bin\startup.bat

Tomcat can be started by executing the following commands on Unix (Solaris, Linux, etc.) machine −

$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh
 
or
 
/usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.33/bin/startup.sh

After a successful startup, the default web applications included with Tomcat will be available by visiting http://localhost:8080/. If everything is fine, then it should display the following result −

Tomcat Home page

Further information about configuring and running Tomcat can be found in the documentation included here, as well as on the Tomcat website: https://tomcat.apache.org/

Tomcat can be stopped by executing the following commands on windows machine −

%CATALINA_HOME%\bin\shutdown

or

C:\apache-tomcat-5.5.29\bin\shutdown

Tomcat can be stopped by executing the following commands on Unix (Solaris, Linux, etc.) machine −

$CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh

or

/usr/local/apache-tomcat-5.5.29/bin/shutdown.sh

Step 3 - Setup Eclipse (IDE)

All the examples in this tutorial are written using Eclipse IDE. I suggest that, you have the latest version of Eclipse installed in your machine.

To install Eclipse Download the latest Eclipse binaries from https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/. Once you download the installation, unpack the binary distribution into a convenient location.

For example in C:\eclipse on windows, or /usr/local/eclipse on Linux/Unix and finally set PATH variable appropriately. Eclipse can be started by executing the following commands on windows machine, or you can simply double click on eclipse.exe

%C:\eclipse\eclipse.exe

Eclipse can be started by executing the following commands on Unix (Solaris, Linux, etc.) machine −

$/usr/local/eclipse/eclipse

After a successful startup, if everything is fine, it should display the following result −

Eclipse Home page

Step 4 - Setup Struts2 Libraries

Now if everything is fine, then you can proceed to setup your Struts2 framemwork. Following are the simple steps to download and install Struts2 on your machine.

  • Make a choice whether you want to install Struts2 on Windows, or Unix and then proceed to the next step to download .zip file for windows and .tz file for Unix.

  • Download the latest version of Struts2 binaries from https://struts.apache.org/download.cgi.

  • At the time of writing this tutorial, I downloaded struts-2.0.14-all.zip and when you unzip the downloaded file it will give you directory structure inside C:\struts-2.2.3 as follows.

Sturts Directories

Second step is to extract the zip file in any location, I downloaded & extracted struts-2.2.3-all.zip in c:\ folder on my Windows 7 machine so that I have all the jar files into C:\struts-2.2.3\lib. Make sure you set your CLASSPATH variable properly otherwise you will face problem while running your application.

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