Some features may be available in IDEA 8 ("Diana") EAP or IDEA 9 ("Maia") EAP only.
Please see Struts2PluginChangeNotes for more information.

"Hello World" with Struts 2 and IntelliJ IDEA 8 - Detailed introductory blog post by Tabrez Iqbal

Symbol

Status

(minus)

planned

(plus)

in progress

(tick)

done

(question)

future planning

IDE integration

(tick) "Go To Action/Package" by name

Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+N (Go To -> Symbol) to quickly navigate to any Action/Package by simply entering its name (including wildcards):

(tick) Dedicated icons for configuration/JAVA (Action) files

Recognize Struts related files/classes at a glance throughout the IDE (Project/Packages View, Editor tabs, Autocompletion, ..):

Struts 2 facet

All plugin configuration settings are bundled in a dedicated facet. Simply attach a new Struts 2-facet to an existing Web-facet, create a fileset and add your struts.xml files from all auto-scanned configuration files in your project and the plugin is ready to work.

struts-default.xml from struts2-core.jar as well as any struts-plugin.xml from plugins (e.g. Spring integration) have to be added additionally to the fileset. Also make sure to add all files used via <include>. Many features will not work if this setup has not been performed properly.

(tick) Dedicated facet with configuration options
(tick) File Set manager

Group and manage your struts.xml files with an easy to use editor, providing maximum flexibility w/r to your project setup.

(tick) Detect struts.xml files not mapped to file sets

Spot setup errors easily, additionally providing a quickfix to add the unmapped struts.xml-files to any existing fileset.

(plus) Library validator/setup

Creates IDEA project/module-library and - if required - downloads all necessary JAR files required for Struts 2.

(minus) Library validator/setup for standard plugins (Spring, Tiles, JSF, ..)
(tick) Autodetection of Struts 2 facets

Existing struts.xml files are recognized upon opening your project and a new S2 facet is created automatically.

(tick) Integration with "New Project"

Add a blank ready-to-start Struts 2 application template by selecting Struts 2 from the list of available technologies. A S2-facet with default fileset and an empty struts.xml-file already mapped in web.xml will be created automatically, all necessary libraries will be setup as well.

struts.xml/validation.xml

(plus) Autocompletion for all possible elements

Auto-completion is available for virtually all tags and attributes, just give it a try:

(plus) Rename refactoring/Find Usages for all referencable elements

Need to refactor your S2 application? Just use the Rename refactoring (Shift+F6) or perform Find Usages (Alt+F7 or Ctrl+Alt+F7):

(plus) Navigation to referenced elements

Simply Ctrl-click (or press Ctrl+B) on any element to navigate to its declaration - or take a peek without leaving the current editor using Quick Definition Lookup (Ctrl+Shift+I).

(plus) Highlighting of configuration/reference errors

Errors are highlighted immediately in the editor, additional validation is triggered for Make Project.
IDEA 7: see "Validation" tab in S2 facet for more options
IDEA 8: see Settings->Compiler->Validation

(plus) Quickfixes
(minus) struts.xml: restrict resolving to result location depending on result-type (e.g. Velocity)
(plus) Various inspections for common configuration errors

Highlight common configuration errors or possible problems on-the-fly.

(tick) Structure View

Visually groups all relevant info with Autoscroll from/to source:

(plus) Pageflow graph (struts.xml)

IDEA 8/9
Graph of all relevant S2 elements.

validation.xml

(minus) Navigation to/from corresponding Action-class
(minus) Show validation.xml node(s) under corresponding Action-class (like GUI-Designer forms)
(minus) Create corresponding validation.xml-template from Action
(tick) Structure View

Actions (JAVA/Groovy)

(tick) Navigation to Action-declaration in struts.xml

Simply click on the action icon in the left editor bar to quickly open up the corresponding mapping(s) in struts.xml:
IDEA 8.1.1/IDEA 9: also for Groovy

(minus) Highlight unused Actions, Quickfixes: Delete, Map in struts.xml
(minus) Autocompletion/navigation to result-declaration in struts.xml

JSPs

(tick) Navigation to Action-declaration/class

Click on the Action-class icon to quickly open the corresponding JAVA/Groovy-class or Ctrl+click on the "action"-attribute to go to the struts.xml-definition:

(minus) Autocompletion/navigation for form properties
(plus) Autocompletion/navigation for other tags

Autocompletion is available for most attributes with static values.

(tick) JavaScript support

(plugin "JavaScript Support" must be enabled)
Enjoy the power of IDEA's powerful JavaScript-support within all S2 UI-tags.

(tick) CSS support

(IDEA 8/9: plugin "CSS Support" must be enabled)
Define inline-styles (cssStyle) or reference existing CSS classes (cssClass).

Plugins/3rd Party Extensions

(tick) Support struts2-spring-plugin

(plugin "Spring Support" must be enabled and Spring facet configured properly)
Reference Spring beans where supported (e.g. in <action> "class", constant "value").

(minus) Support Convention plugin
(tick) Integration with Tiles 2

(plugin "Struts 1.x" must be enabled)
IDEA 8.1.1/IDEA 9
struts2-tiles-plugin.jar must be present as well as Tiles libraries. Configured tiles.xml-files will be set automatically as described in http://struts.apache.org/2.x/docs/tiles-plugin.html.