Struts-faces library: provided struts/tiles example doesn't work?!

Question

Dear all,
I�ve been trying to migrate my struts-tiles application to JavaServer Faces using the struts-faces library. I downloaded the latest nightly build, but I was unable to deploy and run the second example (the one using tiles) on Tomcat 5.0.28.
     At first, the <h:commandLink> components for the �Register� and �Login� links on the first page (loggedoff.jsp) wouldn�t work, probably because they should have been replaced by <s:commandLink>. So I fixed that, but then I get an inexplicable http 404 error: �Invalid path /layout was requested� when I click on any of the two links.
     Looking at the source code of both JSP and HTML I noticed that the JSP element <s:form action="/editRegistration"> translates to <form id="menu:_id5" name="registrationForm" action="/StrutsFacesExample/layout.do" method="post">. The action element is obviously(?) wrong: there is no layout.do action mapping anywhere, it�s the path pointing to the main layout jsp with the suffix replaced!
I�ve been able to trace the problem down to method �action� in library class org.apache.struts.faces.renderer.FormRenderer, which does the following:
protected String action(FacesContext context, UIComponent component) {
String actionURL =
context.getApplication().getViewHandler().
getActionURL(context, context.getViewRoot().getViewId());
if (log.isTraceEnabled()) {
log.trace("getActionURL(" + context.getViewRoot().getViewId() +
") --> " + actionURL);
return (context.getExternalContext().encodeActionURL(actionURL));
Any ideas on what could be going wrong here? I also tried deploying the example on Tomcat 5.5.7 and JBoss 3.2.5, but the behavior was the same.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated!
Mario

Answer 1

Did you ever find a solution to this problem? No, unfortunately I am still looking for a solution to this one.
I� ve also reported this to Bugzilla (http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=35265) so you might want to keep an eye on the issue, in case something comes up. However there appears to be no significant activity in the library�s source code repository for almost a month.
After reading other discussions in forums like this one, I must say that I am discouraged: I seriously doubt if anyone has successfully managed to use the struts-faces integration library. A lot of people are suggesting that integrating the two frameworks is not worth the trouble, and so I am now in the process of evaluating the cost of complete migration from struts to jsf (btw, it doesn�t look good�). Nevertheless, some recent articles demonstrate the library�s use (the most recent one is Kito Mann�s http://www.jsfcentral.com/reading/#4030 ) so I might be wrong.
It would be nice though if someone who has managed to integrate the two technologies successfully would share his views on this forum�
Mario