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Asked: 2026-05-23T13:48:26+00:00

I have a simple JSP that contains checkbox and submit button: <form action=MappingSubmit.jsp enctype=multipart/form-data

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I have a simple JSP that contains checkbox and submit button:

<form action="MappingSubmit.jsp" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="POST" name="fileSubmit">
<input type="checkbox" name="scan" value="scan">Scan immediately<br><br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

and a second JSP that should read the submitted data:

<body>
<%
    response.getWriter().println(request.getParameter("scan"));
%>
</body>

The problem is that getParameter always returns null.
If I remove the enctype from the form, it works.
Why? No way to use checkbox in a multipart/form-data form?

Thanks
Udi

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The default HTML form encoding is application/x-www-form-urlencoded. The getParameter() method is relying on this. Other form encodings are not supported by getParameter(). When you’re using Servlet 3.0, you should be using getParts() for this instead. Or when you’re using Servlet 2.5 or older and/or when you’re using a multipart/form-data parser already such as Apache Commons FileUpload, then you should be using this instead to extract the parts.

    If you’re not using a file upload element <input type="file"> in the same form, then you don’t need the enctype="multipart/form-data" at all. You could just remove it so that it defaults to application/x-www-form-urlencoded and you can use getParameter() the usual way.

    See also:

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