Question

1. How do I dynamically render HTML in Play? For example I have an enum or DB table with a list of platforms (pc/xbox/ps3). I want to render in my HTML form a checkbox list with each of those. For now I’ve just hard coded the HTML form with elements, but long term it needs to be dynamic and the lists (checkbox/radio/dropdown) need to be bound to the system so they receive new items as new items are added to the database.

2. On postback how do i access those form fields in the controller handling the postback? I’ve found that in the controller action’s function parameter list I can specify the name of the form field, and that works, but this is unrealistic if i’m going to have forms that have 100 fields, then I do’nt want to have to declare 100 params in my controller action function.

Answer 1

1. you can call method values() on enums to obtain array of enum values. And then map it to List. For example you can use Lists.newArrayList(array) from google-collections.

2. form parameters you can find in request.params hashmap. Request is a field inherited from play.mvc.Controller.

Also have a look at this http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.2.3/cheatsheet/controllers. (Usefull stuff but not easy to find)

UPD

List theList =....;
render(theList);

and in the template (example for select):

<select id="viewSelect" size="1" >
  #{list items:theList, as:'listItem'}
   <option id="${listItem.getId()}">${listItem.getName()}</option>
  #{/list}
</select>