Init actionservlet in struts

Question

Hi all,
is there a common way to initialize servlets in struts.
I want to put some variable into the servletcontext.
I do that in my loginaction via
    if(firsttime) {
      setSessionManager(); // Method which sets my variable
      firsttime = false;
    }I think thats is not a very elegant way.
I could derive from actionservlet, do my stuff in init()
and put that into the web.xml.
But I do not like introducing a new class just for initializing.
Is there an easier way to init things ?
Any hint is appreciated.

Answer 1

You could have a servlet that is configured to load on startup.
In its init procedure, set the servlet context attributes as you wish.
The only purpose for this servlet would be to run at startup and do config.