The official documentation for the framework is provided both
online and as a self-installing WAR in the distribution.
The struts-documentation.war includes our
You are invited to preview the documentation online and then install the application locally for closer study.
NOTE: If you are previewing the documentation on the website, most of the links in this section will refer to the Nightly Build. When learning about Struts, be sure to refer to the documentation for the version you are actually using. The documentation is bundled with each distribution as an application that you can install locally. For your convenience, links to the documentation for the current stable release (1.0.2) are also provided on the menu bar. Whenever possible, please help conserve our bandwidth and install the documentation locally.
The concise Struts User Guide introduces the Model-View-Controller architecture, and how it relates to the major components of Struts. If you want to find out "How Struts works", this is the place to start. Along with an architectural overview, the User Guide also includes detailed installation instructions and release notes for each version of the framework.
Our Developer Guides are detailed technical references to the extensions and components provided in the Struts distribution. Included are package overviews and API referencea for each of the Struts taglibs, along with guides to the Struts Utilities and the Struts Validator. The Developer Guides are designed as a day-to-day reference to help you get the most out of the standard packages.
For more detail about a specific class or package, the Struts Javadocs are surprisingly comprehensive and carefully maintained. It is strongly recommended that you refer to the Javadoc for each class as you begin to use it. This will help ensure that important features and options are not overlooked. What you don't know, can't help you.
The Struts FAQs are designed to fill in any small gaps left by the Javadocs or the User and Developer Guides.
The Howto Guides are designed to help you get started with some of the optional extensions and components available for Struts. These include topics like using the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol with Struts and how to unit test your Struts applications.
A more extensive Struts knowledgebase is available at the JGuru FAQ and Forum.
Of course, the only true documentation is the code itself. If you have any questions about how Struts actually works, do not hesitate to use the source. For the complete, buildable source code to the entire Struts framework, see the "src" folder in the your source distribution.
The Struts Mailing Lists are a treasure trove of useful, interactive information. The user list tends to carry a high volume, so always check the published documentation and the MAILING LIST ARCHIVE before posting a new question. Like as not, it's already been asked and answered.
If you really can't find the answer to your question in the FAQs or list archive, you can post your query to the Struts User list -- BUT YOU MUST SUBSCRIBE TO THE USER LIST OR THE USER LIST DIGEST BEFORE POSTING. If you would rather not subscribe to a list, you can go through the BaseBeans Struts Newsgroup instead.
Please note that the Struts User list enjoys a "casual friday" policy. More off-topic messages are tolerated on Fridays so long as the message is prefixed with the token [FRIDAY]. If you'd rather not be troubled by these postings, please set your mail filter accordingly. Posting [FRIDAY] articles on any other weekday is strongly discouraged. We thank you for your cooperation.
The Struts Resources page provides links to everything else published about Struts, including:
We also showcase a few of the many sites that are "Powered by Struts."
The Struts News & Status page highlights current events affecting the framework and overvies the current project status.
The Roadmap page outlines our tentative plans for future development.
Next: Acquiring Struts