Setting attributes in forms or anchors

[Andy Selador]

Is there a way to set an attribute (c:set) in an <a> or <form> before performing the action?

[Darryl Nortje]

Hi Andy,

Have you tried doing it using javascript. onclick event. That should execute first before performing the action.

[Andy Selador]

Thats what I'm doing now, but its in a c:forEach loop, and the EL expression isn't evaluated at the time of the forEach; instead it waits until the click event. This means the last element of the forEach is used.

<blockquote>code:

---

<pre name="code" class="core">
<table style="font-style: bold">
<c:forEach var="hostname" items="${hostnames}">
<tr>
<td><a href="Server.do"
onclck="<c:set var='hostname' value='${hostname}' scope='session'/>">${hostname}</a>
</td>
<td>${hostname.ipAddress}</td>
</tr>
</c:forEach>
</table>
</pre>

---

</blockquote>

See what I mean? I think I may be forced to use scriptlets. (I had to misspell onclick for the reply, otherwise I get an error on the post.)

[Andres Quinones]

If I understand your problem is that you want to set a Session attribute in the onlcik event of an <a>?

If this is correct I just want to tell you that this is impossible because the javascript is executed in the client browser. In this case you should send the hostname as a request parameter, in order that the Server.do action could set this parameter in the session scope.

Hope this helps.

[Andy Selador]

It does. I had to make a helper class to relate the String parameter to the actual enum instance it represents.