The reloading java actions functionality enables dynamic reloading of webwork actions. This means that modifications can be made to webwork actions, they can be recompiled, and they will automatically be reloaded by webwork.
2 Rationale
The rationale for this is that while most appservers provide for hot redeployment of webapps, it is often a fairly slow process. This is especially the case if you have a lot of data in your sessions, or have a startup listener which initializes caches, starts off a scheduler, or performs other time consuming startup tasks. Containers that do detect class file changes will go through all that startup expense since they will reload the entire application.Webwork actions lend themselves to easy reloading since they are never reused, and a new action is instantiated every time for a given request. This means that they do not hang around and nothing should be holding onto them. Dropping in an updated class file therefore is very easy and quick.
3 Caveats
There are also downsides to this approach. Chief amongst these is the fact that a custom classloader is not allowed by the servlet spec. Secondly, there is a (fairly slight) performance hit when using this flag. However, this should not be much of a problem since this setting is aimed at a development environment only, and is not to be used in a live deployment. By default, action reloading is not enabled.
4 Usage
Add the following configuration setting to your webwork.properties file: