Question

How do I capture the values for the fields searched on in the jqGrid toolbar search ?

I am using Spring 3 MVC for my backend work.

Currently my method signature looks like

public @ResponseBody PageResponse getEmpList(
    @RequestParam("page") int pageNo, @RequestParam("rows") int rowLimit,
    @RequestParam("sidx") String sortCol, @RequestParam("sord") String sortDir)

How do I modify it to capture the various search parameters, i.e the field(s) that have been searched on and the respective search strings

I am using jqGrid 4.3.1

Answer 1

I am providing an answer to the question I have posed myself.

There are two ways to capture the filter parameters

If you set your stringResult option as true as in

jQuery("#grid_id").jqGrid('filterToolbar', {stringResult: true});

The filter parameters get submitted as a json String with the following format

{"groupOp":"AND", // the group operation when you have multiple feilds to search on
"rules":[
    {"field":"countrycode", // the field / columns being searched on
      "op":"bw", // operator for searching, here bw mean beginning with
      "data":"ind”}] // the search string for the above field
}

Then we could decide how to handle the filter parameters from the above JSON String. The recommended method is to use the JSON libraries available that can convert Java objects to JSON Strings and the other way around as well.

In such a case the method signature to handle this will be as

@RequestMapping(value= "/cityData", method = RequestMethod.POST)
     public @ResponseBody PageResponse getCityList(@RequestParam("page") int pageNo,
                                                  @RequestParam("rows") int rowLimit,
                                                @RequestParam("sidx") String sortCol,
                                                @RequestParam("sord") String sortDir,
                                                @RequestParam("_search") boolean search,

//captures the filter parameters as a json string                                       
    @RequestParam(value="filters",required=false) String filters)

The _search parameter is triggered to a true value by the filter toolbar when a search string is entered

The other approach to handle these filters is to set stringResult option as false as in

jQuery("#grid_id").jqGrid('filterToolbar', {stringResult: false});

By setting this option to false the column / field being searched upon and the search string get passed as name value pairs

So in this case we are searching for countryCode and the string that we are searching for is ind.

So the function signature will change to

 @RequestMapping(value= "/cityData", method = RequestMethod.POST)
     public @ResponseBody PageResponse getCityList(@RequestParam("page") int pageNo,
                                                  @RequestParam("rows") int rowLimit,
                                                @RequestParam("sidx") String sortCol,
                                                @RequestParam("sord") String sortDir,
                                                @RequestParam("_search") boolean search,

    //capturing the search string for the country code column                                           @RequestParam(value="countryCode",required=false) String countryCode,)

Hope this helps some one !!