Question

Currently I’m making a form with JSP that I need to have a couple fields display, or not display depending on a check box value. Since I’m new to JSP, I’m wondering is it possible in JSP to do this without javascript? (Asking this question just in the case a user goes to fill out the form fields with js disabled, whats my fallback?)

Answer 1

Your first step would be to replace those checkboxes by submit buttons. You can’t let a checkbox submit the form without using JavaScript onclick="submit()". You can if necessary throw in some CSS to make those buttons to look like a checkbox by removing/changing the background/border/inset/font.

After having changed that, just let JSP generate the desired HTML conditionally using JSTL <c:if> tags and like.

E.g.

<input type="submit" class="checkbox" value="${param.showFoo ? 'x' : ' '}" /> toggle foo
<input type="hidden" name="showFoo" value="${not param.showFoo}" />

<c:if test="${param.showFoo}">
    <label for="foo">Foo</label>
    <input type="text" id="foo" name="foo" value="${fn:escapeXml(param.foo)}" />
</c:if>

with CSS something like as

input[type=submit].checkbox {
    width: 14px;
    height: 14px;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    border: 1px gray solid;
    background: none;
    font: sans-serif 10px;
    line-height: 10px;
}