,ch14.9433  Page 481  Monday, February 14, 2005  12:55 PM

In a STXX application, your action form holds XML data. STXX provides two spe 

cialized classes that wrap XML data in an

ActionForm

. The contained XML can be

represented as a traditional DOM object using the

DOMForm

or as a JDOM object

using

JDOMForm

. JDOM provides a more natural API than DOM, so the

JDOMForm

was

used in this recipe.

This

form bean

element references an XML model that describes the XML structure

of the form data. The XML models for your application are defined in the WEB INF/

xmlform models.xml file. Example 14 32 shows the model, representing user infor 

mation, used in this recipe.

Example 14 32. XML models used by STXX

A custom action in STXX performs the same functions as in a conventional Struts

application: you retrieve data from the form, access the model, and forward to a des 

tination. For STXX, the pattern can be specifically laid out as follows:

1. Retrieve the

ActionForm

 and extract the form data as a DOM or JDOM object.

2. Access the business model to retrieve data.

3. Format the data into an XML in memory representation.

4. Forward the request to a STXX transformation pipeline.

The actions defined in Example 14 31 represent a typical flow common to most web

applications. The first action, /viewUserList, displays data on a page. The second

action, /addUser, presents a form where a user can input data. The third action,

/saveUser, saves the data in the model and forwards back to the first action.

Here's the first action mapping: