Not on all fours but purring like a kitten :o)
I think you are making this harder than it has to be, Mark. You can take some extended time and build some utility classes to do this sort of thing and it will save you time in the long run. I have not done that as yet, or I would share the classes. But, it would not be hard. The interfaces would be fairly clear and could be done lots of ways. I would, off the top of my head, create something like the following logic:
HiddenParameterActionFormPart -- holding the static parameter names and values to pass to hidden type fields in forms that are involved. You could generate this list via reflection from scratch at runtime with methods and fields matching the relevant names of parameters to pass and having them initialized with values. This way your application would not interfere with the GUI boys.
HiddenParameterActionForm -- A subclass of ActionForm that would be used to dynamically prepopulate with the request scope HiddenParameterList. This could be a little tricky. If so, roll your own for this. Maybe this and the HiddenParameterActionFormPart should be melded into the same class.
A HiddenParameterTag <html:hidden/> -- that would generate the hidden fields in whatever way you wanted for any form.
This all would merely automate the process that the coder has to do using hidden fields and request scope.
I would not be surprised if there were a solution out there on this already. I would also not be surprised if there were not a lot more effective solution than this "off the top of my head" version.
Michael McGrady
