[S2] Data entry form for nested beans

[Skip Hollowell <sk...@skipdaddy.com>]

I have the following Bean, which represents an Account I am working on:

public class PaymentBean {
    String acctNumber;
    DebtorBean debtor;  // The person who owes money(s).  MAkes sense to 
use this bean as I used it throughout the app
    PayorBean   payor;   // The person making the payment(s)  Same 
reason as above.
    CreditCardBean cc;  // The card used to make the payment(s).
    SinglePaymentBean[] singlePayment;   // A bunch of singlePayments to 
be made, with a $ amount, a fee,  and a date
}

I have tried several different ways in my AccountAction to populate this 
bean from the data entered on the form.   I can, of course, read 
multiple layers down inside my nested beans and display it in a JSP, but 
how I do I allow for data entry into them? 

Does one create a simple form that has a bunch of simple text fields, 
and the action then uses all of these to populate the pieces of the 
various beans that make up Payment Bean.  Or is there a correct way to 
represent this structure inside of my form so that the data goes 
directly into the appropriate subBean upon form submittal?  I went 
through the person showcase, and thought I was on the right track, but 
based upon that simple example, i was never able to get the data from 
the form to the bean.  Yes, I can get errors to you from the experiment 
if it helps.

I could supply jsp and action code examples, but they are all just 
failed tests at this point. I am so in need of direction on how best to 
design and implement this base concept in Struts 2.  Any, ANY, advice 
and help would be greatly appreciated.

Skip Hollowell


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Re: [S2] Data entry form for nested beans

[Mark Menard <ma...@mjm.net>]

On 4/23/07 1:03 PM, "Skip Hollowell" <sk...@skipdaddy.com> wrote:

> I have the following Bean, which represents an Account I am working on:
> 
> public class PaymentBean {
>   String acctNumber;
>   DebtorBean debtor;
>   PayorBean   payor;
>   CreditCardBean cc;
>   SinglePaymentBean[] singlePayment;
> }
> 
> I have tried several different ways in my AccountAction to populate this
> bean from the data entered on the form.   I can, of course, read
> multiple layers down inside my nested beans and display it in a JSP, but
> how I do I allow for data entry into them?

Yes, reading is more intuitive than writing into the data model.

I don't know how others do this, but this is what I do.

You have the PaymentBean which has dependencies. So, in my action's
prepare() method I would instantiate those beans and wire them together.

Public class MyAction extends ActionSupport implements Preparable {

  private PaymentBean paymentBean;

  public void prepare () {
    this.paymentBean = new PaymentBean ();
    paymentBean.setDebtor (new DebtorBean () );
    
    // Continue this pattern of instantiating and wiring.
  }

  ...

  public PaymentBean getPaymentBean() {
    return this.paymentBean;
  }

  ...

}

There might be a way of doing this using the type conversion support, but
I'm personally not familiar with it. (I use factory methods to produce my
various prototype entities, so my controller layer is not tied to a
particular domain model implementation.)

To fill in the DebtorBean.firstName property, if there was one, would be
like this in the JSP:

<s:textfield name="paymentBean.debtor.firstName" />

That will OGNL expression will get the paymentBean from your action, call
getDebtor() on the paymentBean, then call setFirstName() on the DebtorBean.


> Does one create a simple form that has a bunch of simple text fields,
> and the action then uses all of these to populate the pieces of the
> various beans that make up Payment Bean.

You could but it is cumbersome and error prone in my opinion.

Mark
-- 
Mark Menard
Business: http://www.vitarara.net/
Personal: http://www.vitarara.org/
Mark's Struts 2 Cookbook: http://www.vitarara.org/cms/struts_2_cookbook

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