New chapters from Chuck Cavaness' book on Struts have been posted on TheServerSide. Chapter 5 ,"Struts Controller Components" and Chapter 6, "Struts Model Components" take an indepth look at the controller and the model portions of Struts, with and focus on building an architecturally correct storefront application, integrated with a persistence framework.

Click Here to Review the New Chapters .

interesting book, on the web page i read you encourage people to review the chapters, make changes, and resend it to you. but in exchage for the community help i hope you will post the pdf of the final book, when ready. after all you talk about an "open source" book... can you public state here and on the web page that you'll do it?
thanks.

Good question, here's the best answer that I can give. First of all, I said it was "sort of an open source", not that it "was" an open source book. Open source in the sense that everyone can contribute to the book. I've received many and I mean many, copies of most of the chapters and I'm updating the master documents with the changes that are applicable.

For that, readers get a copy of every chapter (yes in draft form) and have free access to the material. The best part is that everyone gets to make the decision very early on, about whether or not to spend hard-earned cash for the book. There are several that I can think of, where I would have loved that opportunity. At the same time, the Struts community doesn't have to wait to the published date for the material. It's available as soon as finish each chapter.

I say all of this to say that the decision is really not up to me. In this case, I'm working for O'Reilly and that decision is entirely up to them. Speaking only for myself and not for O'Reilly, they are a business and are in the business to make a profit. To do this, I'm sure they have to sell books. Whether it becomes a downloadable PDF, is entirely in their hands. They own the material in the end.

Assuming the book comes out the way that I plan, the more people that have access to the material, the more books that will sell in the end. I think there's some evidence to that fact. We'll have to wait and see.

Sorry I can be more specific right now.

Chuck

well, thanks for telling the truth, however i hoped for a different answer. i've read the first 3 chapters, and the initial impression is good. i've found 2 or 3 errors, but i'm not going to tell you where they are, until you can officially say that the final pdf will be made publically available on the web. i understand that the book is created for commercial purposes, and you have all the rights to do so. however i don't want to work for free, or just for the fame.
thanks for your reply.

Let me see if I understand you correctly, you are holding the errors hostage? This might be a first. Seriously, readers don't have to participate in the feedback process. They are free to download the "draft" chapters, read them, and not say a word. The freedom to participate is part of the beauty of it.

Thanks for reading them anyway,
Chuck

Let me understand: you don't want to work for free, but are willing to accept Chuck's working for you for free? I imagine that your philosophy will make you send a fee to Chuck for the knowledge you have acquired reading the draft chapters...

Frankly, you appear ridiculous: too bad you're probably italian like me, someone stupid could generalize.

Does anyone care to shed some light as to which frameworks are currently supporting JSTL? Such as Struts, WebWork, etc.
Thanks!

Even if the book doesn't appear as a free PDF in its final form, you have access to all of the drafts for "free", and can participate. How many other books do this? Chuck is doing a great thing here. We get to read up on Struts NOW, and he gets good feedback which helps make the book even better. Thanks Chuck!

As an author and a contributor to books, I must vocally speak out against Matteo's comments. By withholding feedback and contructive criticism because the book is a commercial product will discourage future authors from contributing to this forum. Your self serving needs in this matter will stifle future development and contributions.

We need to keep in mind that theserverside.com is a non-profit community and the content, ideas, and information shared here is done so willingly and free of charge. I think all users of this community have an obligation to support the authors on this site in whatever way we can.

Tyler Jewell
Director, Technical Evangelism
BEA Systems

I think getting all the chapters for free in draft form is itself a blessing in disguise...Lets be like a freindly community and be proud in helping in bringing out a great book...and not link every damn thing to dollars....
The core thing is, Knowledge is devine and lets help those who can gain knowledge through our participation in this venture...Oriely or the author is not a charity organisation
to give everything for free...they have to survive else they will also become bankrupt with more job losses..:-)

Regards

Rajeev Jayaram

Just to put this thread to rest, the amount of feedback for the chapters so far, has been awesome. I would like to think that Matteo's comments were sort of "tongue in cheek", which is why I responded in kind with the "hostage" comments.

Tyler is right, the community is much better for these types of adventures. Believe me, the authors are not writing these types of books for the money. Most people would be surprised at the amount that an Author gets per book. I'm no John Grisham and this isn't "The Firm" :)

When you figure it out per hour, we could be making much more money doing consulting work than writing computer books. So there has to be a bigger cause. That cause is to write something that has value to the larger community. Of course it's not completly about utilitarianism, we do make a little money for writing these, but I doubt that's the reason any Author uses as motivation.

Enough said,
Chuck

Matteo's comments are specious. He should perhaps go practice omphaloskepsis. I have taken advantage of the ServerSide's two previous EJB pdf's but feel the authors should get rewarded for their efforts and thus have also purchased the books.

We appreciate Chuck's including us in his work.

Chuck

I have heard about Struts for long time but I haven't actually tried to use it because I thought it was difficult to learn and use.

However, after reading the first 3 chapters of your book I now think Struts can make the development easier and won't take very long to learn.

One thing I want to know about is if you will talk about any tools that help development of web app with Struts in the later chapter. Because I have heard about that there are some tools that have GUI for the configuration file editing.

Thank you for your great book!

Edmond

Edmond,

  I'm glad to hear that the material has made some sense out of it. I'm definitely covering the Struts console by James Holmes (http://www.jamesholmes.com/struts/console) in chapter 4. It's not included in the draft chapter because I was waiting on the version that supports 1.1. That will be included for sure.

  As far as other tools, that's a tougher question that, just as I'm writing this, positive will start this thread off in another direction. The problem is that there are many different types of tools. I'm not sure that I could give accurate coverage to each one. Surely, someone would get left out and use that to decide the book sucks.

  The other problem is that the book is already getting huge. O'Reilly books tend to be chop full of great information, but compact in size. Because of the amount of material that I'm already planning to cover (look at the table of contents here: http://www.theserverside.com/resources/strutsreview.jsp), I don't think my editor (Brett Mc Laughlin) will let anymore slip in.

Chuck

Concerning Matteo's Comments..
<QUOTE>
well, thanks for telling the truth, however i hoped for a different answer. i've read the first 3 chapters, and the initial impression is good. i've found 2 or 3 errors, but i'm not going to tell you where they are, until you can officially say that the final pdf will be made publically available on the web. i understand that the book is created for commercial purposes, and you have all the rights to do so. however i don't want to work for free, or just for the fame.
thanks for your reply.
</QUOTE>

My comments, that's soo sad. You are already profitting from reading the free information being given to you and you expect MORE!!!

I hope to write my own book one day and I WOULD NEVER consider anything other than the process used here with the Mastering Enterprise Java Beans, EJB Design Patterns and
now the Struts framework books.

Kudo to the Authors and Publishers of these Tomes of Infinite Wisdom!!

Keep up the good work guys and get ready for my comments. They'll be flying in this weekend.

:)

Matteo,
You are a waste of human space. Take your empty head and less than useless views elsewhere. This is a free country. Nobody wants your error report. There are plenty of brilliant people in this forum who would be more than happy to provide that information for greater good of the community.

Hi Friends,
I required the all the chapters for this struts book.
Anyone can help me.
Thanks,
Nitin Shidne.

Excellent work!!
Most of the STRUTS stuff out there is weak, but this is TOP-NOTCH!!

Thank you very much, and keep up the good work!

And...To top it off: Chuck, if the book is good, I hope you DO make a pile of loot. Why not? All (well at least most) of us love doing this stuff, but getting paid makes it even better.

-Newt

Read couple of chapters. Found the material very useful.
Keep up the good work Chuck!

It is really gr8.
The Server Side is doing really gr8 job
by bringing such good books publicly available for review.
Keep it up friends!!We r with you

Vimarsh Vasavada
www.popnet.co.in

why i can not find any link in the download page?
is it still available?
if not,could anyone share a copy with me?
my email is sdhjc at 163 dot com.
thanks

Hello friends ,


 i dont know . whether i shld put this note over here or not ..

But can any 1 tell me // from where i can get stuff on Struts Vlaidator.