Thanks very much...
I will look into the getInputStream(). It seems reasonable, but then wont I
have to pass this around with the request object?
Sean
>From: "Greg Trasuk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: RE: Ordering of parameters in HTTPRequest Object
>Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 12:37:16 -0400
>
> I agree with Michael, it's not a great idea to depend on the order of the
>request parameters. It makes the code more fragile and less resilient to
>maintenance. For example, you might want to change the layout of the form
>to improve usability or change the aesthetics, which would change the order
>in which the controls appear, and hence the order in which the fields are
>submitted, which breaks your servlet.
>
> Far better to name the parameters. If naming is not possible, you might
>want to look into reading the request body directly using the
>ServletRequest.getReader() or ServletRequest.getInputStream() methods. You
>would then need to parse the data to extract the parameters. I would
>imagine that you could find similar code in the Tomcat sources, but it's
>still going to be some work.
>
>Greg Trasuk, President
>StratusCom Manufacturing Systems Inc. - We use information technology to
>solve business problems on your plant floor.
>http://stratuscom.ca
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Wentzel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 8:39 AM
>To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
>Subject: RE: Ordering of parameters in HTTPRequest Object
>
>
> > Hello all, I am new to this mailing list, and Tomcat, so please pe
> > patient...
> >
> > I am using Servlets to recieve html form submissions.
> >
> > Problem is that the form fields are in a particular order on
> > the form, but
> > when I get the Parameters from the request object this field order is
> > gone...
> >
> > The post data comes in in the proper order, but I can not recover the
> > ordering. If it was only 1 form I was dealing with, I could
> > write code to
> > format a response, but the app is very generalized, and it is
> > designed to
> > handle many different forms.
> >
> > So the question. Is there no way in tomcat to preserve the
> > ordering of
> > parameters from a form submission?
>
>No. This is servlet API thing, not a tomcat thing. I think it's a bad
>idea to develop servlet to depend on the order in which a request object
>is formed because you never know for sure that an ordering is going to
>be fixed. For example, say a hashing algorithm is used for speed up
>access. How do you order the elements of a hash table? The only thing
>I could suggest is preface every form element with its' order, 1st element
>would be 0_elementname and 9th element would be 8_elementname, then order
>the elements yourself, but I think this is kind of sloppy.
>
>
>---
>Michael Wentzel
>Software Developer
>Software As We Think - http://www.aswethink.com
>
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