The web application framework of the KNS is built on top of the Apache Struts framework. As a result of this, the web application components of the KNS are loaded into the client application as a struts module. The struts module and various pieces of the Rice web content can be found in the binary distribution. They should be copied into the root directory of your web application.

A special implementation of the Struts ActionServlet is provided to help with the loading of the struts modules. It can be configured in the application’s web.xml as in the following example:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.kuali.rice.kns.web.struts.action.KualiActionServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>config</param-name>
        <param-value>/WEB-INF/struts-config.xml</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>0</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

Notice the init-param above points to a Struts configuration file. This file is intended to be the struts configuration file for the client application. It’s used by the KNS for doing redirects back to the main application and is also used for adding KNS-based screens within the client application. Specifically, this is where action mappings go if using the transactional document framework of the KNS.

There is an example file in the distributions under config/examples/struts-config.example.xml. This will need to be renamed to struts-config.xml and copied to your web application’s WEB-INF directory. It can then be loaded using the KualiActionServlet as seen in the example above.

In this example file you will see a reference to a message resource properties file. As is the case with a standard Struts-based application, the resource properties file is used to load text strings for internationalization purposes. The KNS framework requires that at least the app.title property to be set, as in the following example:

app.title=Recipe Sample Application

The KNS framework requires a couple of ServletContextListener classes to be configured in the application’s web.xml. These include:

These should be included in the web.xml after any listeners or servlets that might be used to actually initialize the Spring context that loads Rice.

Here is an example of what this configuration might look like in web.xml:

<listener>
    <listener-class>my.app.package.ListenerThatStartsRice</listener-class>

</listener>


<listener>
    <listener-class>org.kuali.rice.kns.web.listener.JstlConstantsInitListener</listener-class>

</listener>



<listener>
    <listener-class>org.kuali.rice.kns.web.listener.KualiHttpSessionListener</listener-class>
</listener>

As of Rice version 1.0.1.1, messages are loaded through the new KualiPropertyMessageResourcesFactory. This class is a factory of KualiPropertyMessageResources, which takes in a comma delimited list of .properties files.

This is set up in the struts-config.xml files near the end of the file:

<message-resources factory=”org.kuali.rice.kns.web.struts.action.KualiPropertyMessageResourceFactory” parameter=”” />

When the parameter above is set to an empty string, Rice uses the default value of properties files. The default value is set by the rice.struts.message.resources property the common-config-defaults.xml file. This is the default setting:

<param name=”rice.struts.message.resources”>KR-ApplicationResources,org.kuali.rice.kew.ApplicationResources,org.kuali.rice.ksb.messaging.ApplicationResources,KIM-ApplicationResources” />

This can be overridden in rice-config.xml. This value should be in a comma delimited format. The list of files is loaded from left to right, with any duplicated properties being overridden in that order. Therefore, in the list default list if a property key in KR-ApplicationResources was duplicated in KIM-ApplicationResources, the value used would be the one set in KIM-ApplicationResources.

The KNS uses DWR to provide AJAX support. In order to enable this, the org.kuali.rice.kns.web.servlet.KualiDWRServlet must be configured in the application’s web.xml as follows:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>dwr-invoker</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.kuali.rice.kns.web.servlet.KualiDWRServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>debug</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>springpath</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

...

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>dwr-invoker</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/dwr/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>