your version of struts  supports validation  and must have validation.xml
Struts Framework provides the functionality to validate the form data. It can be use to validate the data on the users browser as well as on the server side. Struts Framework emits the java scripts and it can be used to validate the form data on the client browser. Server side validation of the form can be accomplished by sub classing your From Bean with DynaValidatorForm class.
The validator  framework was developed by David Winterfeldt as third-party add-on to Struts. Now the Validator framework is a part of Jakarta Commons project and it can be used with or without Struts. The Validator framework comes integrated with the Struts Framework and can be used without doing any extra settings.

Validator uses the xml  file to pickup the validation rules to be applied to an form. In XML validation requirements are defined applied to a form. In case we need special validation rules not provided by the validator framework, we can plug in our own custom validations into Validator.
The Validator Framework uses two XML configuration files validator-rules.xml and validation.xml. The validator-rules.xml defines the standard validation routines, these are reusable and used in validation.xml. to define the form specific validations. The validation.xml defines the validations applied to a form bean.

OK, I did all it takes to setup the validation  framework and it does work fine.
BUT there's still Two little problems  which is not solved for me and in order tell you those, let me bring up this sample:

Suppose I have an action  class as follows:

public class  EditPartAction extends DispatchAction {

    public ActionForward createPart(...params...) {

        //takes you to createPart.jsp         
        return mapping.findForward("createPart");
    }

    public ActionForward editPart(...params...) {

        //takes you to editPart.jsp
        return mapping.findForward("editPart");
    }
}

and a ActionForm class as follows:

public class EditPartForm extends ValidatorForm {
    private String partCode;
    private String partName;

    //and getter and setter methods
}

    <action
      attribute="editPartForm"
      validate="true"
      input="/system/sentinel/part/createPart.jsp"
      name="editPartForm"
      parameter="do"
      path="/editPart"
      scope="request"
      type="com.ns.prsnt.struts.action.EditPartAction">