Problem mapping to form bean

[Mark Reyes]

Hi All,

I'm trying to learn struts so I am experimenting on some simple web programs.
I have a table that displays list of users and in the last row of each column I made 3 submit buttons that allows the user to VIEW, EDIT and DELETE each row. Also I also name the three button with property ManageUser.

  <html:form action="/MyUserMgmt.do">
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" id="tblUser" 
<logic:iterate id="user" name="users">
<tr align="center" bgcolor="FFFFFF">
<td bgcolor="FFFFCC">
<c:set var="sampleUserID" value="${user.id}" scope="request" />
<bean:write name="user" property="username"/>
</td>
<td>
<bean:write name="user" property="lastName"/>
</td>
<td>
<bean:write name="user" property="firstName"/>
</td>
<td bgcolor="FFFFCC">
<html:submit property="ManageUser" >
<bean:message key="button.view"/>
</html:submit>
<html:submit property="ManageUser"  >
<bean:message key="button.edit"/>
</html:submit>
<html:submit property="ManageUser"  >
<bean:message key="button.delete"/>
</html:submit>
</td>
</tr>
</logic:iterate>
</table>
</html:form>  

What I want is for me to have a reference on what button was click.
I did make a form bean with ManageUser as private variable so I can get the value if its VIEW, EDIT or DELETE.

  public class UserManagementForm extends ValidatorForm
{
private String ManageUser="";
 
public String getManageUser() {
return ManageUser;
}
 
public void setManageUser(String manageUser) {

this.ManageUser = manageUser;
}
.
.
.
 
  

But when I try to extract the value from the javabean in the action class to which this form bean is map, no value can be retrieved and Myform.getManageUser() returns null.

 public class UserManagementAction extends Action
{
public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping,
ActionForm form,
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
{
UserManagementForm Myform = (UserManagementForm)form;

String strChoice = Myform.getManageUser();
 
.
.
.

return mapping.findForward("view");
}
}   

Here's my struts config xml.

    <action path="/MyUserMgmt" 
    type="com.training.action.UserManagementAction"
    name="userManagementForm"
    scope="request"
    validate="false"
    input="/WEB-INF/jsp/user/userShowList.jsp">
    
   <forward name="view" path="/WEB-INF/jsp/user/ManageUser.jsp" />
   </action>  

I have done a form bean with html text field and password and it works fine. I'm just experimenting if I could do it with buttons.. Can I do it this way? Thanks.

[Merrill Higginson]

The reason the property is null is that you have specified the wrong property name in your <html:submit> tag. It should be manageUser, not ManageUser.

Here are a couple of more suggestions:

Move the <html:form> stanza so that it is inside the <logic:iterate> stanza. That way you will have a separate form for each row. When one of the buttons in a row is pressed, only the data for that row will be submitted.

Remove the line

<c:set var="sampleUserID" value="${user.id}" scope="request" />

It isn't going to work. The result of this would be that the User id of the last user is always the one in the request, not the user of the row for which a submit button was pressed. Replace it with:

<input type="hidden" name="userId" value="${user.id}" >

And add a userId property to your ActionForm bean.

You might also want to consider using a LookupDispatchAction.
[ July 18, 2007: Message edited by: Merrill Higginson ]

[Mark Reyes]

Hi Merill,

Thanks for your patient analysis of my rather "messy" code and giving valuable suggestion on how to execute what I really wanted even if I really didnt directly ask about it

I did tried what you suggest about LookupDispatchAction and found it really useful since I could separate the processing into different ActionForward sequence instead of using if-else statement..

public class UserMgmtAction extends LookupDispatchAction 
{
 
@Override
protected Map getKeyMethodMap() {

Map map = new HashMap();

map.put("button.view", "view");
map.put("button.edit", "edit");

return map;
}
 
public ActionForward view(ActionMapping mapping,
ActionForm form,
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
{
int intUserID;

System.out.println("Goes into ActionForward VIEW");

UserManagementForm myForm = (UserManagementForm)form;

String strChoice = myForm.getManageUser();
intUserID = myForm.getUserId();
 
//Processing goes here
 

return mapping.findForward("success");
}

public ActionForward edit(ActionMapping mapping,
ActionForm form,
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
{
int intUserID;

System.out.println("Goes into ActionForward EDIT");

UserManagementForm myForm = (UserManagementForm)form;

String strChoice = myForm.getManageUser();
intUserID = myForm.getUserId();

                //Processing goes here

return mapping.findForward("success");
}

}

My Struts Config..

   <action path="/UserMgmt" 
    type="com.training.action.UserMgmtAction"
    name="userManagementForm"
    scope="request"
    validate="false"
    input="/WEB-INF/jsp/user/userShowList.jsp"
    parameter="manageUser" >
   <forward name="success" path="/WEB-INF/jsp/user/ManageUser.jsp" />
   </action>

Thanks again...