Rating: 
Summary: Rare book good for learning and reference
Review: I am a Java server-side developer. I bought this book to learn Struts 1.1 and am very happy with the way it communicated the concepts of the framework. The code examples are excellent, they really demonstrate the utility of Struts while modeling good, sound server-side programming techniques. I expected to not need this book after I worked through it the first time. Instead I am going back to it very often using it as a reference. In my experience it is a rare book that is useful for both learning and reference. Thank you! Nit: the only real shortcoming in 1.1 coverage is the lack of details about DynaActionForms, but I can decipher the horrible docs for that one bit of information.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good for a quickstart
Review: I appreciate this book, because it is very lean and helps you to get a struts application running in short time without ploughing through hundreds of pages.
The one star missing is due to the fact that the book is full of errors.
Rating: 
Summary: Book was ok
Review: I bought this book with no knowledge of struts. It met some of my needs but after after finding some excerpts from, "Struts In Action" I wish I would have bought that book.
Rating: 
Summary: not really pleased
Review: i cannot agree with the other reviewers, that this is a great book about jakarta struts. You can learn struts with this one but it is not really fun :
you find copy-and-paste errors in this book in heaps (e.g. the unnecessary copied references and codeblocks in the employees example-application : ResultSet in Delete & EditEmployeeAction, isCanceled in GetEmployee,... these do not prevent the application to work like it should, but they are quite confusing if you are new to struts and try to learn it from the code examples. And there are copy-and-paste errors in the non-code sections also, like the RequestProcesser being called a Plugin by mistake all the time, probably because this chapter has been copied from the preceding Plugin chapter, which is also quite confusing).You also see a lot of nonprofessional Java code in the code passages not related struts in this book (e.g. String target = new String("success"), sqlStringBuffer.append("phone" + phone), ... ).
Although this book is said to cover Struts 1.1 some information in it is already outdated (e.g. ActionMapping Extensions are no longer specified as an ActionServlet init-param in the deployment descriptor, but as an attribute of the ActionMappings element in the struts configuration file in Struts >= 1.1 and a lot of the code examples contain declarations which are deprecated now...)
Interesting struts related topics like tiles, DynaForms, the validator-framework, declarative exception handling, ... are not addressed with a single word in this book.
Some information is incomplete, like for example the instructions for setting up mysql, which are missing the steps for creating new user accounts and allocating a password and access permissions which will also be needed to run the examples.
Instead of that the books contains a short introduction to programming Servlets and JSPs and Instructions on how to set up JBuilder to debug Web-Components embedded into the Tomcat web-container (do you need this ?).
In the example code available for download from the companion Web site, there are also some minor syntactical mistakes which prevent them to work "out of the box" (e.g. you need to remove the blank lines in the ApplicationResources.properties...).
I don't want to say that this is a bad book, since it is easy to read and helped me to take my first steps with the framework quickly. I'm still using it quite often to look up something (especially the tag library references are usefull). But if you want to buy only one book on struts, i would definitely not recommend this one.
Rating:
Summary: Good solid Struts Tutorial
Review: I feel this is the best book for novice Struts developers eventhough it is not as up to date as some of the others. This book does a good coverage of extending Struts, and a really good coverage of the inner workings of Struts. I have all of the Struts books (Sams, KF, Orielly, Manning, and Wiley) etc. This is the first book out of the lot that I could just read (cover to cover). It has good flow, and it is easy to understand. (I read it quite a while back when it first came out). Areas of weakness is in Tiles framework support and the Validator framework, but currently no Struts book covers Tiles well. Struts in Action does a really good coverage of the Validator book as does the Orielly book. First get this book as a good tutorial.
Second get the Struts in Action book as a good reference.
Then get the Orielly Struts book (in this order in my opinion). If you are doing Struts, it can't hurt to have Sue Speilmans book (who covers nested tags well), and the Sams Struts book. I have all of the books. This is the best tutorial for getting started.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's the beef?
Review: I had this book on back order for a long while, and I have to say I am very disappointed with the final result. The writing is generally clear, and the book is reasonably well organized, but as other reviewers have already pointed out it wastes many of its pages simply providing "filler" background information. Frankly most people who pick up a copy of this book will already know about servlets and jsp, why do they need such a basic introduction? When the reader gets to the "meat" of the text - i.e. the material about Struts itself it almost reads like a recipe... do A, B and C. This is not unhelpful, but basic questions are left unanswered - WHY would I want to use this feature of struts? what are the implications of its use? and so on. The book is extremely lightweight on these issues. I was left to use my own knowledge and experience to draw those conclusions for myself. Hardly a winning recommendation for a book entitled "Mastering Jakarta Struts". I understand that many other struts texts are in the pipeline. My advice is to buy one of those.
Rating:
Summary: great Struts book
Review: I liked this book and learned a lot from it. It is now the top book on the stack of books on my desk. One of the things I like is
that this book is a great reference. I consult it frequently for explanations of Struts tags, especially because the author included
code samples that show how each tag is used in combination with other tags. I use the bean, logic, and template tag library
references pretty regularly. The error handling info is great. The info on validating data in your forms is good. The deployment advice is excellent. I also
really like the debugging chapter and found it incredibly useful since Struts isn't the absolute most stable framework I've ever
used. One reviewer said he didn't like the embedded Tomcat example in the debugging chapter, but I learned a lot from
debugging a real app and can apply the concepts pretty easily to my own work. I read through the internationalization section of this book and am now pretty hyped about putting that functionality in some of
my Struts apps, even if my company doesn't really think its necesary yet. :| I also like that this book shows you how to build a complete Struts applications. You can see clearly how Struts works with
servlets, jsp, and other serverside technologies. I even learned a few things from the summary of servlets and jsp in the second
chapter. All around a very useful book!
Rating:
Summary: I'll wait for the next one!
Review: I was anticipating a book on Struts for a long time. The documentation for Struts (as with many open source tools) is quite lacking. This is the first of several books coming out on Struts and to be honest, the author should have waited a while longer and worked on it some more. It's obvious that the Author is a good writer. In fact, I enjoyed his servlet book a great deal. However, he missed the boat on this one. There are two main problems that I have with this book. First, there are many teechnical mistakes that should have been caught. It was quite distracting for me. I found myself looking for them rather than soaking up the material. The second problem, which has been pointed out by other reviewers, is that the 1.1 coverage is terrible. Struts 1.1 is leaps and bounds better than 1.0 and the set of new features in 1.1 is what makes Struts more usable in applications. To release the book early like this and not cover those features is a mistake for the publisher. Unless the goal is to quickly publish the next version on 1.1 and rake in a few more bucks, I don't know what the purpose would be. The short of it is, this book is fine if you want a high-level overview of Struts. However, if you are looking for the "why" and not just a superficial "how", you may be disappointed. For sure, "Mastering" Struts it is NOT.
Rating:
Summary: Great Starter for Struts
Review: I was told by manager to fix a web app that was designed and implemented via Model 1 architecture. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. After reading this book, not only do I have a strong grasp on Model 2 architecture but I also have the beginnings of a superb web app that will definetly go into my portfolio upon completion. This book is not meant to make you a master at using struts, its purpose is best served as a guide to those who are interested in learning how to develop a quality web app.
Rating:
Summary: Very pleased
Review: I'm very pleased with how this book goes way beyond the docs. It demonstrates how to build two complete Struts apps (a stock ticker tape and a employee contact database). The explanation of the design, implementation, and deployment of these apps was enlightening (so was the code itself). I cannot udnerstand why the Struts docs only has one page on i18n when its supposed to be one of the major reasons for using it. This book has a whole chapter which is very useful. The practical debug material is great. This book covers a lot of topics that as of today are still marked "TODO" in the Struts docs like ActionServlet, RequestProcessor and extending ActionForm. This book didn't cover every Struts tag but it hit the ones I use the most. The info is much deeper than the docs and corrects errors in the docs! This book came along at exactly the right time for me. I'm very pleased!
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