Restarting Tomcat everytime I deployed with the Lomboz Eclipse plugin was proving to be too lengthy, so I set out trying to customize Ant a bit.

(more…)

The controller is finished, although it may change later. It takes a URL string from the request and instantiates an Action object which then can forward someone to a JSP page or do whatever.

(more…)

Finally got a useful action map coded. Before, the controller was just simply printing Strings. Now, Classes are being instantiated from a Properties file and the Action interface is working as it should. The latest version of the Controller is posted.

(more…)

Accomplished a few things today … I finally figured out how to create an externalized mapping of commands to classes. I was reading a chapter in the book JavaServer Pages by Oreilly. They described a popular technique of creating an Action Interface and then extending this interface to give you a mapping of actions to class names. This is the code snippet they show:

(more…)

I am going to document my progress through a personal challenge so to help others and myself learn about steps A-Z in creating a web app from scratch.

The Acronym Challenge is going to be a posting game (I use this term loosely) where an acronym will be posted and people submit entries that match the acronym. For example, TCP = tangy chocolate popsicles. Then the entries can be voted on. A set number of top scoring entries will be displayed, etc, etc. The entire system will be anonymous to start with and may or may not incorporate login functionality. I want it to be easy to use.

(more…)