I'm writing what (I hope) will be a highly-configurable generic shopping cart program using (we hope) Struts. My issue is I want to be able to modify the elements of various forms on the fly, and I'm struggling with the best way to do this. For example, I have defined an order form as a subclass of DynaActionForm, like so:
<form-beans>
<form-bean name="orderForm" type="org.netpush.cart.customer.order.OrderForm">
<form-property name="billingFirstName" type="java.lang.String"/>
<form-property name="billingLastName" type="java.lang.String"/>
<form-property name="billingOrganization" type="java.lang.String"/>
<form-property name="billingAddress1" type="java.lang.String"/>
<form-property name="billingAddress2" type="java.lang.String"/>
<form-property name="billingCity" type="java.lang.String"/>
<form-property name="billingState" type="java.lang.String"/>
<form-property name="billingPostalCode" type="java.lang.String"/>
...
<form-property name="creditCardNumber" type="java.lang.String"/>
<form-property name="creditCardType" type="java.lang.String"/>
<form-property name="creditCardExpDate" type="java.lang.String"/>
<form-property name="creditCardName" type="java.lang.String"/>
...
</form-bean>
Within this form I would like to be able to swap out different fields, depending on if the shopping cart is configured in certain ways. For example if instead of capturing credit card information, the store administrator wants to capture a purchase order number and an account id number.
The administrator must be able to change settings like this in a separate web-based application talking to a database (not by logging on to the server and modifying the config files!). I have no problem reading the settings from the database and exposing them to the view and to the controller. The issue is what's the best to dynamically change the fields in this DynaActionForm given the database settings.
My thoughts are revolving around two options:
1. Subclass the RequestProcessor. I could create mutilple ActionForms, one for address info, one for credit card info, and one for PO info, and then revamp the RequestProcessor to accept more than one Form per action, and populate and validate each one in turn. (During validation, I could check the settings to find out which of the optional forms must pass validation.)
2. Write functions to dynamically modify the struts-config.xml file and reload the settings whenever the administrator changes what information they want to collect. The problem with this is I have to worry about file locking, and interruptions in service as the configuration is reloaded. (Has anyone written tools to modify the config file through a web application?)
If anyone has come across or has any thoughts about the best way to approach this sort of thing, I would be very grateful to hear what you have to say.
Many thanks, dave
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