Configuring the controller

We'll place our controller configuration into /WEB-INF/calyxo-control-config.xml. It looks like this:

<calyxo-control-config version="0.9"
  xmlns="http://calyxo.odysseus.de/xml/ns/control">

  <actions>

    <!-- The index action just forwards to our login page -->
    <action path="/index">
      <dispatch path="/WEB-INF/jsp/login.jspx"/>
    </action>

    <!-- Login action -->
    <action path="/login" class="de.odysseus.calyxo.sample.login.LoginAction">
      <dispatch name="success" path="/WEB-INF/jsp/welcome.jspx"/>
      <dispatch name="input" path="/WEB-INF/jsp/login.jspx"/>
    </action>

    <!-- Logout action -->
    <action path="/logout"
      class="de.odysseus.calyxo.sample.login.LogoutAction">
      <dispatch name="success" path="/WEB-INF/jsp/goodbye.jspx"/>
    </action>

  </actions>

</calyxo-control-config>

Let's explore the elements and attributes used above:

• You must declare the xmlns="http://calyxo.odysseus.de/xml/ns/control" and version="0.9" attributes in the root element.
• The actions element contains a sequence of action elements, which define the entry points of the module.
• An action has a mandatory path attribute. The action path is the action's module relative address. It must start with a slash (/).
• An action may contain dispatch elements. A dispatch has a name attribute. By omitting this attribute, the action's default dispatch is defined. A dispatch may branch to another action by specifying the action attribute or to an application resource by specifying the path attribute.
• If an action has a class attribute, its value is taken to be an action class name (subclass of de.odysseus.calyxo.control.Action), whose execute() method will be called to invoke that action.
• If an action's class attribute is omitted, the controller will insert a default action, which dispatches according to the default dispatch element (the one without a name attribute).

Our sample configuration only uses a small subset of the available elements. Beyond what you have seen so far, you can

• define exception handlers
• define global dispatches
• pass parameters or parameter sets to actions
• declare plugins to be loaded by the module
• use your own dispatchers
• use filters to build action chains

For these advanced features of the controller, please refer to the Calyxo Control component documentation.