Question

Displaying Spring Dropdown in JSP if user does NOT have value in it.. I am trying to find out how to write some Spring code that will not display the following dropdown if the user has a value in the borough field coming back from the server?

<form:select path="borough">
 <form:option value="Staten Island">Staten Island</form:option>
 <form:option value="Queens">Queens</form:option>
 <form:option value="Brooklyn">Brooklyn</form:option>
 <form:option value="Bronx">Bronx</form:option>
 <form:option value="Manhattan">Manhattan</form:option>
</form:select>  

Answer 1

You can use jstl conditional tag to get this done

<c:if test="${empty borough}">
    <form:select path="borough">
    <form:option value="Staten Island">Staten Island</form:option>
    <form:option value="Queens">Queens</form:option>
    <form:option value="Brooklyn">Brooklyn</form:option>
    <form:option value="Bronx">Bronx</form:option>
    <form:option value="Manhattan">Manhattan</form:option>
    </form:select>  
</c:if>

As per comment:

You can achieve if else by using c:choose

<c:choose>
    <c:when test="${empty borough}">
        <form:select path="borough">
        <form:option value="Staten Island">Staten Island</form:option>
        <form:option value="Queens">Queens</form:option>
        <form:option value="Brooklyn">Brooklyn</form:option>
        <form:option value="Bronx">Bronx</form:option>
        <form:option value="Manhattan">Manhattan</form:option>
        </form:select>
    </c:when>
    <c:otherwise>
        This is the else block, you can have multiple when clause so it will become if else if else code
    </c:otherwise>
</c:choose>

Some documentation