In struts-config.xml, an action has an "attribute" attribute in it. What's it do?

Question

In our web app's struts-config.xml file, there are a bunch of <action>s defined, and they have both a name and an attribute attribute on most of them, with the form name in both. For example:

<action
    attribute="LoginForm"  <-- this line
    name="LoginForm"
    path="/welcome"
    type="com.foo.presentation.action.LandingActionPre">
    <forward name="SUCCESS" path="landing.welcome" />
    <forward name="ALREADY_LOGGED_IN" path="/landing.do?m=getLandingPage" redirect="true"/>
</action>

What does the attribute attribute do? Or is it not used and is present here by mistake?

This app has been around for ~10 years, and has seen over 40 programmers touch the code base during that time. So it's possible that one added it to a few actions and every one else copied and pasted it throughout the rest of the app not knowing any better.

I have never heard of the **attribute** attribute. Does it make a difference if you omit it? — Simon Schärer, Jan 08 '15 at 20:48
Well, I have one `` that has a different form name in `attribute` vs `name`, and the `name` one is used. So I guess not. [edit:] And if I remove it, nothing seems to happen, good or bad. — Mar, Jan 08 '15 at 20:49
So it's probably as you said that every one just copied and pasted it to be on the safe side... — Simon Schärer, Jan 08 '15 at 21:22

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 08 '15 at 22:15

According to the Struts 1 doc type definition, it is used as a sort of alias for the ActionForm.

If it's the same as name, it does nothing. But if name is specified and attribute is specified and different from name, then the form can be accessed using the value of either name or attribute.

Relevant section:

<!-- The "action" element describes an ActionMapping object that is to be used
    to process a request for a specific module-relative URI. The following
    attributes are defined:

    attribute       Name of the request-scope or session-scope attribute that
                    is used to access our ActionForm bean, if it is other than
                    the bean's specified "name". Optional if "name" is specified,
                    else not valid.

In struts-config.xml, an action has an "attribute" attribute in it. What's it do?

1 Answers1