At 06:31 AM 7/21/99 +0000, Craig R. McClanahan wrote:
>Bill O'Keefe wrote:
>
>> I am using a bean to initialize the form fields of a JSP.
>> I understand how to use <jsp:getProperty...> to initialize text fields,
>> or to just include a string within the page. However I'm a bit unclear
>> on the best way to initialize radio buttons and check boxes. The only
thing
>> I've come up with is the following (somewhat ugly) solution:
>>
>> <jsp:useBean id="mbean" class="..." scope="session"/>
>> ...
>> <input type="radio" name="choice" value="apparel"
>> <% if (mbean.getChoice() != null &&
>> mbean.getChoice().equals("apparel"))
>> out.println("checked"); %>
>> >Apparel
>>
>> <input type="radio" name="choice" value="computers"
>> <% if (mbean.getChoice() != null &&
>> mbean.getChoice().equals("computers"))
>> out.println("checked"); %>
>> >Computers
>> ...
>>
>> Is there a more elegant way to accomplish this? Thanks.
>>
>
>For radio buttons, I haven't discovered anything that is significantly nicer
>than this. However, an approach I'm taking on SELECT elements might be of
>interest. The basic idea is to add a read-only property to the bean itself
>that returns a String containing the HTML to generate the select element.
>Inside the bean's "get" method you can hide all the messy logic required to
>build this, and then in your JSP page you just say:
>
> <% out.println(mbean.getMySelectElement() %>
>
>to render the entire thing. You might be able to apply the same principle by
>having a pseudo-property that rendered the HTML for all of your radio buttons
>and their options and prompts.
Thanks for the suggestion. While this does indeed 'cleanup' the
JSP, it requires that JSP authors work more closely
with the Java programmers to coordinate the construction of the
page. My ideal goal is to be able to construct JSP that contain
just HTML, and JSP tags to provide the dynamic data (i.e., no
Java scriptlets at all). This seems to be the recommended model
as I understand it.
Unfortunatly, the more I get into this, it appears that this is
not possible (at least, with JSP 1.0). While I've come to
accept the use of scriplets to provide the required 'looping'
constructs (e.g., to iterate through the records of a database
query), I was hoping that I could just use JSP tags to initialize
the various form fields. The more that scriplets are REQUIRED
in a JSP to do basic tasks like initializing form fields, the
less desirable this programming model is to web page developers
(at least to the ones I talked to about this). I think this is why
they prefer template-based systems (like Cold Fusion, etc.).
This is all just my opinion, of course. Also, since I'm not
really a web page developer (just a programmer :-), I'm not
speaking from personal experience, though their objection to
including LOTS of scriptlets in a page does make sense to me.
Comments are welcome. Thanks.
-- Bill
--
Bill O'Keefe [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Open Market, Inc. http://www.openmarket.com/
One Wayside Road TEL: 781.359.7296
Burlington, MA 01803 FAX: 781.359.8200
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