Struts 2 validate specific action in xml

Question

I want to validate specific method only in action class. Action method is this.

public String add() throws Exception {

         


        

Answer 1

I had similar problems but then these are couple of things that i rectified :

1) DOCTYPE in the yourAction-yourAlias-validation.xml should be

    <!DOCTYPE validators PUBLIC "-//Apache Struts//XWork Validator 1.0.3//EN"
    "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/xwork-validator-1.0.3.dtd">

2)Created a custom interceptor to exclude the methods that need not be validated.Below is a sample for my candidate registration where i had to skip validation for district method which fetched districts for a state.

 <interceptor-stack name="clientValidation">
  <interceptor-ref name="basicStack"/>
   <interceptor-ref name="validation">
     <param name="excludeMethods">input,district</param>
    </interceptor-ref>
  <interceptor-ref name="workflow"/>
</interceptor-stack>


<package name="registration" namespace="/candidate" extends="struts-default">
            <action name="candidateRegistration" class="com.app.action.CandidateAction">
            <interceptor-ref name="clientValidation"/>
                <result name="input">/jsps/student/studentregistration.jsp</result>
                <result name="failure1">/jsps/student/registrationfailure.jsp</result>
                <result name="cancelRegistration">/jsps/login.jsp</result>
                <result name="district">/jsps/includes/dropdown_districts_regoffice.jsp</result>
            </action>
        </package>

Answer 2

To exclude some methods from validation you can override parameters of the validation interceptor. For example in interceptor stack you can write

<interceptor-ref name="validation">
  <param name="excludeMethods">input,back,cancel,browse,yourmethod</param>
</interceptor-ref>

in the action configuration you can use above code and

<interceptor-ref name="defaultStack">
  <param name="validation.excludeMethods">input,back,cancel,browse,yourmethod</param>
</interceptor-ref>

Note yourmethod is a method name.

You can specify a validation.xml for only one action by a postfix of action name in this file. For example AcrionClass-add-validation.xml will work only for the action name add in the action config. Note here add is an action name, not a method name.

Often, the name attribute matches the method name, but they may also differ.

Answer 3

Use an action alias: map different methods of an Action to different action aliases in struts.xml, and instead of the single yourAction-validation.xml file, add a yourAction-yourAlias-validation.xml for the validators you want to perform for that method only.

Read more here.

EDIT

No its not validation anything now.

<validators> 
    <field name="aoName">
        <field-validator type="required"> 
            <message>You cannot leave the aoName address field empty.</message>
        </field-validator> 
    </field>
</validators>

name is OraganisationAction-add-validation.xml and put it with action class package. Is there anything to enable validation in struts.xml ?

If you have a correctly configured (for example the default) Interceptor Stack, validation is already enabled. If you are using a file named OraganisationAction-add-validation.xml, that means that:

• your action CLASS must be named OraganisationAction.java;

• your action mapping in struts.xml must be the following:

  <action name="add" class="your.package.OraganisationAction" method="add">
      <result>yourResult.jsp</result>
  </action>
  

Look for typos, check your Interceptor Stack, and it will work automatically.