Struts2 JSON Plugin With Annotations

Question

I have a Struts2 Action Class configured via annotations. All of the "normal" methods that are annotated with @Action work fine.

However, I need to add a method into the action that returns JSON.

Here is a trimmed down version of my class (dao autowired with Spring):

@Namespace("featureClass")
// define success and input actions for class here
public class FeatureClassAction extends ActionSupport {

    FeatureClassDao featureClassDao;

    @Autowired
    public setFeatureClassDao(FeatureClassDeao featureClassDao) {
        this.featureClassDao = featureClassDao;
    }

    List<FeatureClass> featureClasses;

    // snip normal actions

    @Action("/featureClassesJSON")
    @JSON
    public String getFeatureClassesJSON() throws Exception {

        featureClasses = featureClassDao.getAll();
        return SUCCESS;
    }
}

Can anyone assist? If I have to go the struts.xml route, that means moving all of my other actions (which work fine) into it.

Answer 1

I figured I would share the answer, since anyone else with the same problem would likely also face the silence.

I created two actions: FeatureClassAction and FeatureClassJsonAction. FeatureClassAction was annotated as such:

@ParentPackage("struts-default")
@Namespace("/featureClass")
public class FeatureClassAction extends ActionSupport {

FeatureClassJsonAction is annotated like this:

@ParentPackage("json-default")
@Namespace("/featureClass")
public class FeatureClassJsonAction extends ActionSupport {

The method in the JSON Action was annotated like this:

@Action(value="featureClassesJson", results = {
    @Result(name="success", type="json")
})

public String getFeatureClassesJSON() throws Exception {

Hope it helps someone.