Upgrading Struts Action Hooks

Upgrading Customization Plugins

Step 11 of 11

In Liferay Portal 6.1 and 6.2, developers could customize the Portal and Portlet Struts Actions using a Hook and StrutsAction wrapper. For example, the liferay-hook.xml file for a hook that overrode the login portlet’s login action had this entry:

<struts-action>
    <struts-action-path>/login/login</struts-action-path>
    <struts-action-impl>
        com.liferay.sample.hook.action.ExampleStrutsPortletAction
    </struts-action-impl>
</struts-action>

The liferay-hook.xml contains the Struts mapping and the new class that overrides the default login action.

The wrapper could extend either BaseStrutsAction or BaseStrutsPortletAction, depending on whether the Struts Action was a portal or portlet action, respectively.

Since Liferay DXP 7.0, this mechanism no longer applies for most portlets because they no longer use Struts Actions, but instead use Liferay MVCCommands.

This tutorial demonstrates how to convert your existing StrutsAction wrappers to MVCCommands.

Converting Your Old Wrapper to MVCCommands

Converting StrutsAction wrappers to MVCCommands is easier than you may think.

As a review, legacy StrutsAction wrappers implemented all methods, such as processAction, render, and serveResource, even if only one method was being customized. Each of these methods can now be customized independently using different classes, making the logic simpler and easier to maintain. Depending on the method you customized in your StrutsAction wrapper, you need to use the matching MVCCommand interface shown below:

• processAction → MVCActionCommand
• render → MVCRenderCommand
• serveResource → MVCResourceCommand

Look at the ExampleStrutsPortletAction class for a StrutsAction wrapper example. Depending on the actions overridden, the user must use different MVCCommands. In this example, the action and render were overridden, so to migrate to the new pattern, you would create two classes: an MVCActionCommand and MVCRenderCommand.

Next you’ll determine the mapping the MVCCommand uses.

Mapping Your MVCCommand URLs

For most cases, the MVCCommand mapping is the same mapping defined in the legacy Struts Action.

Using the beginning login example once again, the struts-action-path mapping, /login/login, remains the same for the MVCCommand mapping in Liferay DXP 7.2, but some of the mappings may have changed. It’s best to check Liferay DXP’s source code to determine the correct mapping.

Map to your MVCCommand URLs using portlet URL tags:

• MVCRenderCommand URLs go in mvcRenderCommandName parameters. For example,

  <portlet:renderURL var="editEntryURL">
      <portlet:param name="mvcRenderCommandName" value="/hello/edit_entry" />
      <portlet:param name="entryId" value="<%= String.valueOf(entry.getEntryId()) %>" />
  </portlet:renderURL>
  

• MVCActionCommand URLs go in actionURL tag name attributes or in a parameter ActionRequest.ACTION_NAME. For example,

  <portlet:actionURL name="/blogs/edit_entry" var="editEntryURL" />
  

• MVCResourceCommand URLs go in resourceURL tag id attributes. For example,

  <portlet:resourceURL id="/login/captcha" var="captchaURL" />
  

Once you have this information, you can override the MVCCommand by following the instructions found in these MVCCommand articles:

• Adding Logic to MVCCommands
• Overriding MVCRenderCommands
• Overriding MVCActionCommands
• Overriding MVCResourceCommands

Now you know how to convert your StrutsActionWrappers to MVCCommands!