How can I set the welcome page to a struts action?

Question

I have a struts-based webapp, and I would like the default "welcome" page to be an action. The only solutions I have found to this seem to be variations on making the welcome page a JSP that contains a redirect to the action. For example, in web.xml:

<welcome-file-list>     <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file> </welcome-file-list> 

and in index.jsp:

<%    response.sendRedirect("/myproject/MyAction.action"); %>  

Surely there's a better way!

Answer 1

Personally, I'd keep the same setup you have now, but change the redirect for a forward. That avoids sending a header back to the client and having them make another request.

So, in particular, I'd replace the

<%    response.sendRedirect("/myproject/MyAction.action"); %> 

in index.jsp with

<jsp:forward page="/MyAction.action" /> 

The other effect of this change is that the user won't see the URL in the address bar change from "http://server/myproject" to "http://server/myproject/index.jsp", as the forward happens internally on the server.