Question

I am having really upsetting issue with Struts(2.2.3). Here is my field validations on ActionName-validation.xml

<field name="txtRequestDateFrom">
   <field-validator type="conversion">
      <param name="repopulateField">false</param>
      <message>${getText("E011", {"Date from"})}</message>
   </field-validator>
</field>

I don’t have validate() method in my action class. And I have this in my action class:

private Date txtRequestDateFrom;
{getter, setters}

When I enter letters on my txtRequestDateFrom field I get 3 validation messages on

<s:fielderror fieldName="txtRequestDateFrom"/> 

It look like this

Invalid field value for field "txtRequestDateFrom".
Invalid field value for field "txtRequestDateFrom".
Date from has an invalid value

I have my custom theme, and I am sure there is not any much modification from SIMPLE theme. My interceptor stack is pretty much as same default value stack.

<interceptor-stack name="defaultStack">
        <interceptor-ref name="security"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="exception"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="alias"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="servletConfig"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="i18n"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="prepare"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="chain"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="debugging"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="scopedModelDriven"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="modelDriven"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="fileUploadStack" />
            <interceptor-ref name="fileUpload" >
            <param name="maximumSize">4000000</param>
        </interceptor-ref> 
            <interceptor-ref name="checkbox"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="multiselect"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="staticParams"/>
            <interceptor-ref name="actionMappingParams"/>                   
        <interceptor-ref name="params"/>
        <interceptor-ref name="conversionError" />
        <interceptor-ref name="validation">
            <param name="excludeMethods">execute, complete ...</param>
        </interceptor-ref>
        <interceptor-ref name="workflow"/>

    </interceptor-stack>

I found out that one field error can be removed by removing conversionError interceptor from the stack. But I don’t think that would cause this problem. Struts should be able to show errors only defined by developer, right?

Please help me on this

Answer 1

I found that my custom DateTimeConverter was causing the exceptions and the extra error message. Because I found the code below from Struts2 book in order to change my Date’s normal format. When it throws an exception, it shows the exception on console and error message on field error rather than passing the exception to the validator. I think it is sort of bug because this class extends StrutsTypeConverter and it should work as normal converters.

public class StringToDateTimeConverter extends StrutsTypeConverter {

private static final DateFormat DATETIME_FORMAT = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd");

public Object convertFromString(Map context, String[] strings, Class toClass) {     
    if (strings == null || strings.length == 0 || strings[0].trim().length() == 0) {
        return null;
    }

    try {
        Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
        calendar.setTime(DATETIME_FORMAT.parse(strings[0]));
        calendar.set(Calendar.HOUR, 23);
        calendar.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 59);
        calendar.set(Calendar.SECOND, 59);
        return calendar.getTime();

    } catch (ParseException e) {
        throw new TypeConversionException(e);
    }
}

public String convertToString(Map context, Object date) {
    if (date != null && date instanceof Date) {
        return DATETIME_FORMAT.format(date);
    } else {
        return null;
    }
}

}

Anyway I changed throw new TypeConversionException(e); to return null; and added REQUIRED validator on validation XML. Now it shows me error when I put invalid date on my date fields.

PS: Is there any other way to change Struts global date format? Thanks