Hi mate,
There are a couple of things to disentangle here. What you see in your JSP can be a combination of reference data (eg: a list to populate a drop down list etc) and form data.
Consider the following:
public class Employee {
private Long id;
private String firstName;
private String surname;
public Employee(){
}
public void setId(Long id){
this.id = id;
}
public Long getId(){
return id;
}
public void setFirstName(String firstName){
this.firstName = firstName;
}
public String getFirstName(){
return firstName;
}
public void setSurname(String surname){
this.surname = surname;
}
public String getSurname(){
return surname;
}
}
And a form object:
public class EmployeeForm {
public static final String FORM_NAME = "employeeForm";
private Employee employee;
private String rank;
public EmployeeForm(){
}
public void setEmployee(Employee employee){
this.employee = employee;
}
public Employee getEmployee(){
return employee;
}
public void setRank(String rank){
this.rank = rank;
}
public String getRank(){
return rank;
}
}
Controller code:
public class MyController extends SimpleFormController {
public MyController(){
setCommandClass(EmployeeForm.class);
setCommandName(EmployeeForm.FORM_NAME);
}
protected Map referenceData(HttpServletRequest request) {
List myList = new ArrayList(2);
myList.add("Manager");
myList.add("Underling");
request.setAttribute("listValues",myList);
}
// ... rest DIY
}
Now for a bit of JSP
<form action="/path/toController.do" method="POST">
<string:bind path="employeeForm.employee.name">
<input type="hidden" name="${status.expression}" value="${status.value}"/>
</spring:bind>
<table>
<string:bind path="employeeForm.employee.name">
<c:if test="${not empty status.errorMessage}">
<tr>
<td/>
<td><c:out value="${status.errorMessage}"/></td>
</tr>
</c:if test>
<tr>
<td>First name:</td>
<td><input type="text" name="${status.expression}" value="<c:out value="${status.value}"/>"/></td>
</tr>
</string:bind>
... <!-- do surname tags too, as above -->
<spring:bind path="employeeForm.rank">
<tr>
<td>Rank:</td>
<td><select name="${status.expression}">
<c:forEach var="rank" items="${listValues}">
<option value="${rank}"<c:if test="${rank == status.value}"> selected="selected"</c:if>>${rank}</option>
</c:forEach>
</select></td>
</tr>
</spring:bind>
</form>
Hope this helps get you started.
Mike