Question

I have a pretty simple controller that 1) loads an object to be used by a form (view) and 2) accepts changes to that object submitted via that form. The controller (“PersonController”) looks like this:

@RequestMapping(value="/accountsettings/{personid}")
public String loadAccountSettings(@PathVariable("personid") int personid,
                              ModelMap model){
    Person person = personService.find(personid);
    model.addAttribute("person",person);
    return "account-settings-form";
}

@RequestMapping(value="/saveaccountsettings")
public String saveSettings(@ModelAttribute("person") Person person){
    personService.update(person);
    return "account-settings-form";
}

The “Person” pojo looks like this:

public class Person {

    private id int;
    private String name;
    private String username;
    private String phoneNumber;

    //getters and setters follow   

}

And my form (account-settings-form.jsp) has the following:

<form:form commandName="person" action="/saveaccountsettings">
   <form:input path="name" /><br />
   <form:input path="username" /><br />
   <form:input path="phoneNumber" /><br />
   <input type="submit" />
</form:form>

The problem I’m having is that, when the form loads the data (loadAccountSettings), all fields are populated as expected (name, username and phone number). When I go to process the update, however, the phone number field is seen as null, even though data is in the form and (upon inspection using Firebug), I see the value being passed back as a parameter.

Does anyone know why the controller would be missing this field’s (person.phoneNumber) value?

Thanks in advance.

-e

Answer 1

I figured out the problem, a part of the Controller that I left out in the description above and forgot that I added several months ago – an InitBinder method. The phone number field was added recently, but wasn’t added to the @InitBinder’s array of allowedFields:

@InitBinder
public void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder){
    binder.setAllowedFields(new String[]{
        "name", "username", "phoneNumber"
    });
}