How can I test my Struts 1.2 web application without server?

Question

I have a Struts 1.2 web application. It has service & DAO classes as well. How can I test each and every layer without any Web/Application server. I heard, Spring provides the same facility for Spring MVC application. How I can test my application end to end? Please suggest?

Answer 1

Struts 1 is officially deprecated and no longer maintained.

In addition, it is hard to imagine developping a web application without a local server on the developpement machine. Eclipse or Netbeans both offer the possibility to use a local Tomcat or [whatever is you prefered servlet container].

Anyway, if corporate policies require it, you could try to search for old tools that were used for Struts 1, hoping you can still find enough resources for them. I can remember :

• StrutsTestCase for JUnit : StrutsTestCase for JUnit is an extension of the standard JUnit TestCase class that provides facilities for testing code based on the Struts framework. StrutsTestCase provides both a Mock Object approach and a Cactus approach to actually run the Struts ActionServlet, allowing you to test your Struts code with or without a running servlet engine.
• Apache Cactus - in the attic since 2011 ... - : Jakarta previously hosted Cactus, a simple test framework for unit testing server-side java code.

But beware all those are not maintained for years, and links for documentation are often broken. My advice is to use that as an argument to either switch to a more decent recent framework or be allowed to have a local tomcat.