Frameworks Comparision

Ajax support

JSF: No Ajax support, use ICEfaces and Ajax4JSF

Stripes: No libraries, supports streaming results

Struts 2: Dojo built-in, plugins for GWT, JSON

Spring MVC: No libraries, use DWR

Tapestry: Dojo built-in in 4.1


Bookmarking and URLs
JSF does a POST for everything - URLs not even considered

Struts 2 has namespaces - makes it easy

Spring MVC allows full URL control

Tapestry still has somewhat ugly URLs


Validation

JSF has ugly default messages, but easiest to configure

Spring MVC allows you to use Commons Validator - a mature solution

Struts 2 uses OGNL for powerful expressions - clientside only works when specifying rules on Actions

Tapestry has very robust validation - good messages without need to customize

Stripes and Wicket do validation in Java - no client-side


Testability

Spring and Struts 2 allow easy testing with mocks (e.g. EasyMock, jMock, Spring Mocks)

JSF page classes can be easily tested and actually look a lot like Struts 2 actions

Struts 2 Help

Interceptor:-

Interceptors can execute code before and after an Action is invoked. Most of the framework's core functionality is implemented as Interceptors. Features like double-submit guards, type conversion, object population, validation, file upload, page preparation, and more, are all implemented with the help of Interceptors. Each and every Interceptor is pluggable, so you can decide exactly which features an Action needs to support.

Interceptors can be configured on a per-action basis. Your own custom Interceptors can be mixed-and-matched with the Interceptors bundled with the framework. Interceptors "set the stage" for the Action classes, doing much of the "heavy lifting" before the Action executes.

Result Types

Most use cases can be divided into two phases. First, we need to change or query the application's state, and then we need to present an updated view of the application. The Action class manages the application's state, and the Result Type manages the view.

Predefined Result Types

The framework provides several implementations of the com.opensymphony.xwork2.Result interface, ready to use in your own applications.

Chain Result	Used for Action Chaining
Dispatcher Result	Used for web resource integration, including JSP integration
FreeMarker Result	Used for FreeMarker integration
HttpHeader Result	Used to control special HTTP behaviors
Redirect Result	Used to redirect to another URL (web resource)
Redirect Action Result	Used to redirect to another action mapping
Stream Result	Used to stream an InputStream back to the browser (usually for file downloads)
Velocity Result	Used for Velocity integration
XSL Result	Used for XML/XSLT integration
PlainText Result	Used to display the raw content of a particular page (i.e jsp, HTML)
S2PLUGINS:Tiles Result	Used to provide Tiles integration

Optional

JasperReports Plugin

Used for JasperReports Tutorial integration

Optional, third-party plugin

Additional Result Types can be created and plugged into an application by implementing the com.opensymphony.xwork2.Result interface. Custom Result Types might include generating an email or JMS message, generating images, and so forth.

Editors / IDE for Struts 2

1. NetBeans
2. IDEA IntelliJ
3. Eclipse

Above Editors/IDE helps you to build your Struts 2 project.
Build your struts 2 project using above IDE.