Struts2 : Using form action - struts2

Question

I am working with a struts2 based application
Inside my JSP page for form submission is it mandatory to use s:form (Predefined struts component )
Because when i tried this way it worked (calling the Action class under struts.xml )
<s:form action="HelloWorld" >
<s:submit />
</s:form>
But When I tried to use normal form submission as shown
<form action="HelloWorld">
<input type="Submit"/>
</form>
It isn't working , it gave me 404 error .
please tell me is it mandatory to use and for data submission ??

Answer 1

A struts form action and an HTML tag form action are different. You can use a standard HTML form tag with struts if you create a struts specific URL for example (off the top of my head):
if using in multiple places, generate the url in and call like this -
<s:url id="myActionUrl" action="HelloWorld" />
<form action="<s:property value="%{myActionUrl}" />">
<input type="Submit"/>
</form>
or using in a single instance -
<form action="<s:url id="myActionUrl" action="HelloWorld" />">
<input type="Submit"/>
</form>
You can often look at the page source in your browser to see what Struts generates and recreate it manually like this. You will often end up using additional struts tags such as property to retrieve values from your value stack, but it is useful at times, for instance when generating JavaScript code dynamically.

Answer 2

No, it's not mandatory to use any of the S2 tags, but as Russell says, you need to duplicate the correct action URL.
You also need to be a little careful when mixing-and-matching S2 form tags with non-S2 HTML form tags, because the default S2 theme adds additional HTML markup to the page; they don't just create form tags--the default theme uses table tags to lay out the form.

Answer 3

You can use s:form for form and
<input type="Submit"/>
can be replaced by
<button type="submit"/>

Answer 4

It's not about which to use,it is what you want from it.Struts2 tags provides additional capabilities to the form.
Please go through below two links to get the diffrence
1] http://struts.apache.org/release/2.1.x/docs/form-tags.html
2] http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_form.asp
some facilities such as namespace,tooltip,tooltipIconPath and many are provided by struts2 tags.