Question

How do I update data in a Spring WebFlow Model and Pass it back to the same view.

I have a project that I am working on and if the user picks a item from a selectbox I need to go back to the server in fill in some data to the model that needs to be displayed on the view.

You can see from my view-state that once the item is picked I setoff a transition for SelectBoxPicked and call my controller with the model but how do I return the updated model to the view?

Can someone please tell me what to put into my java (controller) code and also in my flow.xml to make this work.

<view-state id="SchoolVisitReport" view="SchoolVisitReport.jsp" model="visit" >
 <transition on="submit" to="addVisit">
  <evaluate expression="flowActions.validateVisit(visit, messageContext)"/>
 </transition>

 <transition on="loadSchools" to="SchoolVisitReport" >
  <evaluate expression="flowActions.initializeSelectableSchools(visit)" result="flowScope.selectableSchools"/>
 </transition>

 <transition on="SelectBoxPicked" to="SchoolVisitReport" >
  <evaluate expression="flowActions.fillDetails(visit)" />
 </transition>


  <transition on="cancel" to="endState" bind="false"/>
</view-state>

Answer 1

That basic approach works; we’ve used it ourselves. The Java code you call from the evaluate method can return false to prevent the transition, although that will just transition back to the current state anyway. I believe anything other than false will take your transition.