FW: newbie - DynaActionForm, EJB and easystruts

["Lim Hock-Chai" <Lim.Hock-Chai@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

below is the main reason that he is against using it:

<Clip from the lesson III>
NOTE:I've decided now that I really hate DynaActionForms. So, although I 
demonstrate their use here, I strongly discourage their use. 
The main reason I am not fond of them is because there are no compile-time 
checks when using them. In other words, to manually set a DynaForm field you do 
something like: yourDynaForm.set("myProperty", myValue );. Well this will 
always compile, but what if "myProperty" really isn't the field name that you 
have defined? You won't know until run time.(Creating a Constants class for 
your form field names helps, but you could still run into the same problem if 
the property in the actual form bean definition was changed, and it wasn't 
changed in the corresponding Constants class). Bugs can easily creep into code 
that are more difficult to track down using DynaForms. More than likely you 
also usually end up having to build a regular form bean which extends a 
DynaActionForm because you realize later on that you have to over-ride the 
reset method or you may even need some custom validation in the validate 
method. So now the only advantage you've gained with your DynaForm is you 
didn't have to create set/get methods. But how difficult is that? Most IDEs 
will do that for you anyway. So, save yourself the later headaches and just use 
regular ActionForms.
<Clip from the lesson III>


>From you respond, seems like you did not find that to be a big problem.
-----Original Message-----
From: java400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:java400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Glenn Holmer
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 10:43 AM
To: Java Programming on and around the iSeries / AS400
Subject: Re: newbie - DynaActionForm, EJB and easystruts


Lim Hock-Chai wrote:
> I went thru a lesson on this web site 
> http://www.reumann.net/struts/lesson3.do and the author is not recommending 
> using DynaActionForm.  Is anybody using this method?  If it does cause 
> problem as the author described, I will try to avoid this.

I didn't do the lesson, why does he recommend against it? We use
DynaActionForms all the time.  You only need to code your own
ActionForm in unusual cases.