Still wishing someone would comment on this design issue (ActionForm defaults)

[Bryan Field-Elliot <br...@netmeme.org>]

Reposted from earlier as I think this is an important design issue and I 
never got any comments on it --

I am working wth ActionForms, one of which contains some list boxes and 
some checkboxes. In building my ActionForm class, I am noticing in the 
docs (under "Form Construction Tags") warnings like the following:

*WARNING*: In order to correctly recognize unchecked checkboxes, the 
|ActionForm| bean associated with this form must include a statement 
setting the corresponding boolean property to |false| in the |reset()| 
method.
*WARNING*: In order to correctly recognize cases where no selection at 
all is made, the |ActionForm| bean associated with this form must 
include a statement resetting the scalar property to a default value (if 
|multiple| is not set), or the array property to zero length (if 
|multiple| is set) in the |reset()| method.


So, in my reset() method, I am putting default values for these 
properties, as recommended.

However, I am noticing that in the "first pass" of loading a JSP page 
(before any Action has occured), my ActionForm bean's reset() method is 
not being called; only it's constructor is being called. So, the logic I 
put into the "reset" method, I copied into my default constructor as well.

It seems to me that one of the following should happen:

1. The default constructor should call the reset() method.
2. The docs should be updated to indicate that, if you are going to put 
default values in your ActionForm, you better set them from your default 
constructor as well as from your reset() method.

What I have done for each my my ActionForm beans is create a method 
called "setDefaults()", and I call it from within the constructor as 
well as from within the reset() method. It is here that I set default 
selections for my listboxes, checkboxes, default text for the text 
fields, etc.

Comments?

Bryan