What is Struts and how it helps in web development?

Apache Struts is a free open-source framework for creating Java web applications.Struts helps in providing dynamism to a web based application in contrast with many websites that deliver only static pages.A web application interacts with databases and business logic engines to customize a response.
Struts is based on MVC(Model-View-Controller) architecture based and it clearly segregate business logic from presentation which is somehow difficult to achieve with JavaServer Pages that sometimes mingle database code, page design code, and control flow code. Unless these components are not separated then it becomes quite difficult to maintain in large web based applications. The Model represents the business or database code, the View represents the page design code, and the Controller represents the business logic or navigational code.

The framework provides three key components:

• A "request" handler provided by the application developer.It maps to a standard URI.
• A "response" handler that transfers control to another resource which completes the response.
• A tag library that helps developers create interactive form-based applications with server pages.

Struts works well with conventional REST applications and with new technologies like SOAP and AJAX.

By the time posting of this article,the latest version of Apache Struts is 'Struts 2.0.6', according to Apache it is an elegant, extensible framework for creating enterprise-ready Java web applications.,was originally known as WebWork 2.You can find out more information about Struts2 here.