Dinesh on Java: Struts 2 Include Tag Example

In this section, we are going to describe the include tag. The include tag is a generic tag that is used to include a servlet's output (result of servlet or a JSP page) to the current page.

The struts include tag is very similar to the jsp include tag and it is rarely used. We have seen how to include the output of a struts action into a jsp using the <s:action> tags. The <s:include> tag is slightly different. It allows you to include the output of a jsp, servlet or any other resource (something other than a struts action) into a jsp. Behind the scenes it is exactly similar to the <jsp:include>, but it allows you to pass parameters to the included file and it is also part of Struts framework.

Add the following code snippet into the struts.xml file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC
    "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 2.0//EN"
    "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-2.0.dtd">
 
<struts>
    <constant name="struts.enable.DynamicMethodInvocation" value="false" />
    <constant name="struts.devMode" value="false" />
    <constant name="struts.custom.i18n.resources" value="myapp" />
 
 <package name="default" extends="struts-default" namespace="/">
        <action name="includetag" class="com.dineshonjava.struts2.action.DataTagAction">
            <result name="success">/success.jsp</result>
        </action>
    </package>
 </struts>

Create an action class as shown below:

package com.dineshonjava.struts2.action;

import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport;

/**
 * @author Dinesh Rajput
 *
 */
public class DataTagAction extends ActionSupport {

 private static final long serialVersionUID = -7744420104547018874L;
 
 private String userName;
 
 public String execute() {
  return SUCCESS;
 }
 
 public String sayHello() {
  return SUCCESS;
 }
 
 public String getUserName() {
  return userName;
 }

 public void setUserName(String userName) {
  this.userName = userName;
 }
 
}

Create a View.
Let us have index.jsp to demonstrate the use of the generator tag:

<%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags"%>
<html>
<head>
<title>Action Data Tag Struts2 | dineshonjava.com</title>
</head>
 
<body>
<h2>Generator Control Tag in Struts2</h2>
<h3>The User Name:</h3>
<s:generator val="%{'Dinesh,Sweety,Anamika,
         Aadesh,Vinesh,Ankit,Honey '}" count="7" 
         separator=",">
   <s:iterator>
      <s:property /><br/>
   </s:iterator>
</s:generator> 
</body>
</html>

Next let us have success.jsp with the following content:

<%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags"%>
<html>
<head>
<title>Action Data Tag Struts2 | dineshonjava.com</title>
</head>
<body>
   <h2>An example of the include tag: </h2>
   <s:include value="index.jsp"/>
</body>
</html>

Your web.xml should look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0">
  <display-name>Struts2DataTag</display-name>
 <filter>
        <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
        <filter-class>
            org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher
        </filter-class>
    </filter>
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>
    <welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
    </welcome-file-list>
</web-app>

Right click on the project name and click Export > WAR File to create a War file. Then deploy this WAR in the Tomcat's webapps directory. Finally, start Tomcat server and try to access

URL http://localhost:8080/doj/includetag.

This will give you following screen:

Download SourceCode
IncludeDataTagExample.zip

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