Jacek The Java Newbie

A typical h:message will display a common error like:

"firstName": Value is required.

This of couse looks very unprofessional, since the field name is taken directly from the name of the property in the backing bean. A pro error message would say:

"First Name": Value is required.

and the "First Name" part of course would be internationalized.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to make this happen! I always get this ugly, unprofessional error message instead of a nice, polished error where you can pass the proper label for a field, instead of just using the raw field name.

How can this be accomplished.

I defined a simple DynaValidatorForm:

<form-bean name="personnelSearchForm" type="org.apache.struts.validator.DynaValidatorForm"> <form-property name="personnelID" type="java.lang.Integer"/> <form-property name="firstName" type="java.lang.String"/> <form-property name="lastName" type="java.lang.String"/> </form-bean>

Have an action that uses it:

<action input="/WEB-INF/pages/admin/personnelSearch.jsp" name="personnelSearchForm" path="/modules/admin/personnelSearchAction" scope="request" validate="true" type="com.ris.struts.admin.PersonnelSearchAction"> <forward name="success" path="admin.personnelEdit" /> <forward name="failure" path="admin.personnelSearch"/> </action>

Set up validation.xml to make "personnelID" an integer:

<form name="personnelSearchForm"> <field property="personnelID" depends="integer"> <arg key="field.personnelID"/> </field> </form>

Properly hooked up the Javascript in the JSP:

<html:javascript formName="personnelSearchForm"/> <html:form action="/modules/admin/personnelSearchAction" onsubmit="return validatePersonnelSearchForm(this);"> <table class="form"> <tr> <td><bean:message key="field.personnelID"/>:</td> <td><html:text property="personnelID" styleClass="text"/></td> </tr> <tr> <td><bean:message key="field.firstName"/>:</td> <td><html:text property="firstName" styleClass="text"/></td> </tr> <tr> <td><bean:message key="field.lastName"/>:</td> <td><html:text property="lastName" styleClass="text"/></td> </tr> </table> <html:submit titleKey="button.search" styleClass="submit"> <bean:message key="button.search"/> </html:submit> </html:form> <html:errors/>

The client-side Javascript validation works perfectly. No issue there. But, if I disable Javascript in IE and try to test the server-side valdidation, nothing happens. It happily gets to my Action even though I have entered a non-integer value into the PersonnelID field.

Help! I am losing my mind trying to figure out where is the problem in the myriad of Struts XML files.

P.S. I am using Netbeans 5.0, using its Struts support. So the web.xml and validation-rules.xml are all configured and set up properly (I believe).
[ February 07, 2006: Message edited by: Jacek The Java Newbie ]