> prepopulating is exactly what i would do, just in an action not in the
> action form. Ah! That makes perfect sense. Keep the action form only for temporarily holding the data we're input/outputting and do all work in the actions. If you want to edit have a 'viewEdit' action that populates the Action form and displays. Then to save, have a 'submitEdit' action. Sounds like a much better way of going about it... Thanks. -----Original Message----- From: Mark Lowe [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 19 March 2004 11:41 To: Struts Users Mailing List Subject: Re: Database backed forms > How would you suggest implementing view/edit functionality without > pre-populating action forms? prepopulating is exactly what i would do, just in an action not in the action form. Sure you can shoe-horn checking your system state constantly but just seems complicated. Surely some transaction management when you come to insert/update/delete data should do the job. > 2) I've extended DynaValidatorActionForm to provide a reset() > implementation. If required, the actionForm's properties are populated > from the backend model. If you've got that far then the question of dynamically generating fields shouldn't be a problem. On 19 Mar 2004, at 11:58, Brendan Richards wrote: > 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! 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