RESTFUL URLs with Stripes

I came across with Stripes Framework 3 months ago. At first I said "yet another java mvc framework" but after reading its documentation I was suprised to see how easy a web application can be developed with Stripes.

I have developed several web applications with Struts and Spring MVC. The main difference between Stripes and other MVC frameworks is the configuration. Struts uses struts-config.xml to configure its action classes and its action forms. Stripes requires minimal configuration to get up and running (dispatcher conf. in web.xml), and zero configuration per ActionBean or page. If you have never heard of Stripes, go read Quick Start Guide, you will thank to me ;). I do not want to duplicate documentation in this post, because Stripes team has prepared a good and comprehensive documentation.

In this post I will explain how you can create clean urls with Stripes. Stripes does not need a configuration file to configure its action beans. If you does not supply any additional configuration Stripes configures your web application with the default RuntimeConfiguration class. An ActionResolver is responsible for finding your action beans and mapping HTTP requests to action bean methods. Stipes uses NameBasedActionResolver by default.
As it is explained here the default behaviour of NameBasedActionResolver is as follows:

1. All classes that implements the ActionBean interface is searched. (By default Stripes searches for ActionBean implementations in classpath. But you can narrow the scope of this search by changing the default configuration. This will improve startup performance of your application. See ActionResolver Properties)
   
2. Packages "web, www, stripes, action" and their parents are removed. For example "com.companyname.superproject.web.user.DetailsActionBean" becomes "user.DetailsActionBean".
   
3. Action or ActionBean suffix is trimmed. "user.DetailsAactionBean" becomes "user.Details"
   
4. "." is replaced with "/". "user.Details" becomes "/user/Details"
   
5. Finally NameBasedActionResolver appends ".action" to the end of the action URL and we get "/user/Details.action"
   

If you want to use clear URLs like "http://www.mysite.com/user/details/12345" instead of "http://www.mysite.com/user/Details.action?userid=12345" you must write your custom ActionResolver implementation. Don't worry it is very easy. First in your web.xml tell Stripes to use your ActionResolver class:
web.xml

 <filter>
  <display-name>Stripes Filter</display-name>
  <filter-name>StripesFilter</filter-name>
  <filter-class>net.sourceforge.stripes.controller.StripesFilter</filter-class>
  <init-param>
   <param-name>ActionResolver.UrlFilters</param-name>
   <param-value>/WEB-INF/classes</param-value>
  </init-param>
         <init-param>
                <param-name>ActionResolver.Class</param-name>
      <param-value>com.companyname.superproject.RestfulActionResolver</param-value>
         </init-param>  
 </filter>

Then write a class that extends NameBasedActionResolver. You only need to override getBindingSuffix() and getUrlBinding(String s) methods. An implementaion (RestfulActionResolver.java) is listed below:
RestfulActionResolver.java

package com.companyname.superproject.RestfulActionResolver
import net.sourceforge.stripes.controller.NameBasedActionResolver;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

public class RestfulActionResolver extends NameBasedActionResolver {
 @Override
 protected String getBindingSuffix() {
  return "";
 } 
 @Override
 protected String getUrlBinding(String s) {
  String urlBinding = super.getUrlBinding(s);
  return urlBinding.toLowerCase();
 }
}

RestfulActionResolver finds ActionBean instances and performs HTTP requests bindings for you.
"com.companyname.superproject.web.user.DetailsActionBean" action bean is mapped to URL "/user/details".

I used Stripes version 1.4.3 in the above example.
I hope you enjoy the post.