In fact it did help because it answered some question for me. I spent the last hour
searching for the RIGHT answer... This looked like it, but for whatever reason it
would never work for me when I tried to do the exact same thing in my own project.
So, I went ahead and hacked together my own solution...
In my test JSP, I have the following:
<form name="test" method="post" action="test.mtx">
<input type="text" name="skills[0]" value="val0">
<input type="text" name="skills[1]" value="val1">
<input type="text" name="skills[2]" value="val2">
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit">
</form>
Then in my ActionForm, I have:
private ArrayList skills = new ArrayList();
public ArrayList getSkills() {
this.skills.add(new String(""));
return this.skills;
}
public void setSkills(ArrayList skills) {
this.skills = skills;
}
public ArrayList getSkillsClean() {
for (Iterator it = this.skills.iterator(); it.hasNext();) {
String s = (String)it.next();
if (s.trim().equalsIgnoreCase("")) {
it.remove();
}
}
return this.skills;
}
Struts knows that it's an indexed property and knows how to populate the ActionForm.
The problem I found is that you either have to (a) have an initial capacity for the
ArrayList and more importantly you must initialize all the elements because the
getSkills() method is called for each element that is added. So, instead, I add an
element in getSkills() myself. The problem is, if you then later call getSkills()
from the Action, as one would expect to do, you'll always have an empty element at the
end (or more, if you happen to call the method more than once). No big deal, but I
decided I didn't like it, so I added the getSkillsClean() method, which removes the
empty elements.
I don't think I'm doing this the right way, and indeed the link you sent shows a more
elegant solution, but as I said it wouldn't work for me when I tried, and I like
things that work (I'm odd that way!), and this has that virtue, so I'm happy.
--
Frank W. Zammetti
Founder and Chief Software Architect
Omnytex Technologies
http://www.omnytex.com
On Thu, September 30, 2004 2:01 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
>
>
>
>
>
> Frank,
>
> Will this help? http://www.reumann.net/struts/nested.do
>
> You didn't say anything about JSTL. Just today I'm working on populating
> a
> checkbox field in an object that's contained in a list. Oops. I just
> remembered I'm using html-el too. I haven't tried it with with plain
> html.
> This is getting it done tho'.
>
> c:forEach items="${workQueueForm.workQueueList}" var="workQueue"
> varStatus=
> "status">
>
> tr >
> td class="Data_AlignMiddle">
> html-el:checkbox property=
> "workQueueList[${status.index}].checked" />
>
> /td>
>
> btw - how do you guys get code in your email w/o it messing up the
> archives?
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> om
> To
> 09/30/2004 01:54 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> PM cc
>
> Subject
> Please respond to Re: How to handle multiploe unknown
> "Struts Users form fields
> Mailing List"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> he.org>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I understand the JSP side of this eqation as you wrote it, although I
> should have said I was looking for a solution that doesn't use Struts
> taglibs because I try to avoid them at all costs, but that aside...
>
> I'm still unclear however on what the ActionForm does... Using this
> concept, do I HAVE to use the LazyActionForm you wrote? I'd prefer to
> only
> use things that are built-in to Struts, and unless I'm missing it in the
> docs, that's not.
>
> The question I'm getting at is that, like I said, the JSP code you wrote
> makes sense, but what will put the submitted parameters into the
> collection
> in the ActionForm when the submission happens? That's the part I don't
> see. Thanks for your help!
>
> --
> Frank W. Zammetti
> Founder and Chief Software Architect
> Omnytex Technologies
> http://www.omnytex.com
>
> On Thu, September 30, 2004 1:51 pm, Niall Pemberton said:
>> You simply need a property in your ActionForm that returns a collection
> of
>> "skill" beans and used the "indexed" attribute on the <html> tags. The
>> "isssue" that most people have problems with is when using a "Request"
>> scope
>> ActionForm you need to populate your collection with the right number of
>> skill beans - the way to handle this is some kind of "lazy list"
>> processing
>> for that property. Search the archives on indexed properties and lazy
> list
>> processing.
>>
>> In your jsp...
>>
>> <logic:iterate name="skillsForm" property="skills" id="skills">
>> <html:text name="skills" property="skillid" indexed="true"/>
>> <html:select name="skills" property="skillLevel" indexed="true">
>> <html:option value="1">Low</html:option>
>> <html:option value="2">Medium</html:option>
>> <html:option value="3">High</html:option>
>> </html:select>
>> </logic:iterate>
>>
>> The trick is to name the "id" attribute to the same as the property in
> the
>> form which returns the collection, that way Struts will generate
> something
>> like:
>>
>> <input type="text" name="skills[x].skillid value=".."/>
>>
>>
>> The lazy ActionForms I wrote have the lazy list behaviour built in....
>>
>> http://www.niallp.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/#lazydynabean
>>
>> Niall
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 6:19 PM
>> Subject: How to handle multiploe unknown form fields
>>
>>
>>> I have an interesting situation, one that has never come up before, and
>> I'm unsure how to deal with it...
>>>
>>> Imagine you have some records from a database representing various
>>> skills
>> (i.e., HTML, Javascript, J2EE, etc.). Each has a SkillID associated
>> with
>> it.
>>>
>>> You create a JSP that lists each skill with a drop-down next to it.
>>> The
>> drop-down allows the user to select their skill level for each skill.
>>>
>>> When the user hits Save, you need to update all the skills for that
>>> user.
>>>
>>> That's the scenario. Here's the question... Each drop-down is given
>>> the
>> name of the SkllID. But how do you write an ActionForm for that?
>>>
>>> Since the database can be expanded to include new skills at any time,
>>> it's
>> impractical to add getters and setters for each SkillID, and in fact
>> breaks
>> low coupling goals anyway.
>>>
>>> Is there a standard way of accepting what kind of amounts to an array
>>> of
>> inputs from a form and getting it into an ActionForm in some way (maybe
> as
>> an ArrayList or something?).
>>>
>>> TIA!
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
