Apache Struts 1 End-Of-Life (EOL) Press Release

2013-04-05 - The Apache Struts Project Team would like to inform you that the Struts 1.x web framework has reached its end of life and is no longer officially supported.

Started in 2000 to create an improved development experience over pure Java Server Pages (JSP) utilization, Struts 1 soon became the de-facto standard for Java-based web application development. Numerous companies adopted Struts 1 as a strategic platform and stayed with it even after JSF was introduced as a standardized Java EE framework for web application development. In the early 2000s, most job offerings in the space of Java-based web technology came with Struts 1 as a must-have skill. Even nowadays many important web sites and web based user interfaces rely on Struts 1 technology. It is furthermore remarkable that many later introduced web frameworks such as Spring MVC or WebWork were crucially inspired by Struts 1.

Struts 1 had its last release - version 1.3.10 - in December 2008. In the meantime the Struts community has focused on pushing the Struts 2 framework forward, with as many as 23 releases as of this writing. Taking this into account, announcing Struts 1 EOL is just the official statement that we have been lacking volunteer support for some time now and that users should not rely on a properly maintained framework state when utilizing Struts 1 in their projects.

As far as the Apache Struts team is currently aware of, there is no urgent issue posing the immediate need to eliminate Struts 1 usage from user projects. However, users should be aware that security and bug fixes will no longer be provided. Apart from that, all Struts 1 related resources and downloads will be accessible from the Apache Struts project homepage now and in future.

While generally possible, the Apache Struts project team would not recommend to start new projects based on Struts 1 any more. Project teams are advised to examine alternative web frameworks instead. While any action based Java web framework is a potential candidate to re-use Struts 1 architectural experience or migrate existing Struts-1-based applications, the Apache Struts team can highly recommend investigating Struts 2 as a successor framework. Struts 2 is modern, highly decoupled, feature rich, well maintained and successfully running in many mission critical projects in the wild. It shares the same basic principles with Struts 1, but offers a highly improved architecture, API and solution portfolio. Other alternatives include Spring Web MVC, Grails or Stripes.