I've seen many posts on "Not pre-populating action forms". This seems to be a design decision as action forms are only for validating input.
However, in most applications I write I don't want to only input data but to view and edit existing data as well. For me ActionForms seem to be the best way to code an input/output layer between the browser and the backend. In order to view and edit existing data, the action form needs to pre-populate its data from the backend before displaying the form. How would you suggest implementing view/edit functionality without pre-populating action forms? I've coded pre-populating action forms in the following way: 1) I've got session objects to maintain my current system state (whether I'm looking at an extisting object or creating a new one) 2) I've extended DynaValidatorActionForm to provide a reset() implementation. If required, the actionForm's properties are populated from the backend model. -----Original Message----- From: Mark Lowe [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 19 March 2004 10:41 To: Struts Users Mailing List Subject: Re: Database backed forms If there's talk of having action forms populated by themselves then I wouldn't. For example you want to create a new record, to instantiate a new form bean you'd perhaps have to save a record to the db, and all this before the user decides what s/he wants to do with it. niall wrote some classes that could be useful. http://www.niallp.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk On 19 Mar 2004, at 11:05, Brendan Richards wrote: > I guess your first place to look would be DynaActionForm - this base > class dynamically creates FormAction objects setting the properties > from > the struts-config file. > > http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/api/org/apache/struts/action/ > DynaAction > Form.html > > DynaValidatorActionForm adds validator support to this. > > Perhaps you could extend this class to add your own methods for > specifying form properties on the fly. > > The key function seems to be initialize(FormBeanConfig) - > FormBeanConfig > "represents the configuration information of a <form-bean> element in a > Struts configuration file". > > So create a FormBeanConfig object in code to represent the dynamic data > you want and then initialize a DynaActionForm with this object. > > Add properties to FormBeanConfig with addFormPropertyConfig. > > That sounds like a realistic starting point... > > Anyone else have any ideas suggestions or corrections? > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Melonie Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 18 March 2004 18:30 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Database backed forms > > I have written a very rough website page content > management system using Struts and OJB. (The goal > being to allow end users to modify content without > having to know anything about Struts or the code > behind the pages.) > > That's working all well and good, but now they want to > be able to create forms "on the fly". > > I would like to store all of the form components and > validation in the database as well, but I'm not sure > how to represent that in Struts (since there's no > ValidatorActionDatabaseForm). > > I would appreciate any advice, tips/techniques, or > gotchas that you guys could provide. > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam > http://mail.yahoo.com > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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]
