Tricky behavior with JSP portlet and forms

[Pierre Henry <ph...@proconcept.ch>]

I had a very strange behavior with my form in a JSP portlet. I have 2 forms,
one is submitted with a normal submit button, the other by a Javascript. The
one with javascript always works fine. For the other, when I submitted it
with the button, the corresponding action method (doUpdatefilter) was
called, but when I submitted it by pressing the enter key, the
buildNormalContext was called. (?!?!) This in IE5 and IE6.

I found out where it came from, I still post it in case other people are
experiencing it : 
IE, depending on the method used to post the form, sends or doesn't send the
submit field (eventSubmit_doUpdatefilter=OK) in the url/request headers. Of
course if it doesn't send it, the default buildNormalContext is called, else
the corresponding method is called.

The solution seems to be to put the evenSubmit as a hidden field with value
1 or whatever, and rename the submit to something else. This works with
IE5/6.

I also tried with Mozilla and here the behavior is different : if the form
uses POST, the buildNormalContext is always method is always called (mo
matter if I have a hidden ebentSubmit field or not) and if it uses a GET,
the right method is called, but the url is really ugly :)

Beside that, I tried hard to get this action working, and this is what I
found out, and this differs slightly but viciously from the tutorial :

- the form in the JSP doesn't need any action attribute

- the ony needed hidden field is js_peid which contains the portlet's ID.


When I put a hidden field for the action :		
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="action" value="CustomizableXsqlPortlet1Action">
the right method was called  but the portlet argument of the doUpdatefilter
method was null, so the action class couldn't do much.

final working form :

<FORM METHOD=POST> put GET for Mozilla
		<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="find" value="2000%">
		... other data inputs  
		<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="eventSubmit_doUpdatefilter"
value="1">
		<INPUT TYPE="submit" name="go" value="OK">
		<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="js_peid"
VALUE="P-f2dc3b8cfd-10001">
</FORM>

Form submitted with JavaScript, IE only (I use this to make the column
header clickable) :

<script type="text/javascript">
		function columnHeaderSubmit(column){
			window.document.forms['sortForm'].sort.value=column;
			sortForm.submit();
		}
</script>
	<form method=POST name="sortForm">

		<input TYPE="hidden" name="sort">
		<input TYPE="hidden" name="eventSubmit_doUpdatesortcol"
value="1">		
		<input TYPE="hidden" NAME="js_peid"
VALUE="P-f2dc3b8cfd-10001">
	</form>
<table cellpadding=4>
	<tr>
		<th><a
href="javascript:columnHeaderSubmit('PERIOD')">Période</a></th>
		<th><a
href="javascript:columnHeaderSubmit('SUBSET')">Sous-Ensemble</a></th>
		etc...



I hope this can help...

Comments/corrections welcome !

Pierre Henry