Question

I have a two stage form which im trying to implement in Lift Scala. I have the first stage of the form working but the second stage is not working as expected.

The first form asks the user for some input, on submission this will take the user to the second form with the details from the first form shown. The user can enter some text in the textfield and then click submit to view the form results. The second form should be made available to any other users so that they can enter a description for the title given by the initial user.

The way it should work is as follows – user 1 adds a title (form phase one), another user can enter a description (form phase two) and then submit the form to view the results. However, when a user enters the description on form phase two and clicks submit – nothing happens. No redirect and no error.

Any help on this is much appreciated.

My code is below, is this the correct approach?

class TwoPhaseForm extends DispatchSnippet with Logger {
  def dispatch : DispatchIt = {
    case "addformphaseone" => addformphaseone _
    case "viewformphaseone" => viewformphaseone _
    case "addformphasetwo" => addformphasetwo _
    case "viewresults" => viewresults _
  }

  object currentAccountVar extends RequestVar[Entry]({
    Entry.create.author(User.currentUser.open_!)
  })

  def currentAccount = currentAccountVar.is

  //The first part of the form
  def addformphaseone (xhtml : NodeSeq) : NodeSeq = {
    def doSave () = {
      currentAccount.validate match {
        case Nil =>
          currentAccount.save
          S.redirectTo("/viewformphaseone?id=" + currentAccount.id)
        case x => S.error(x)
      }
    }

    val acct = currentAccount

    bind("entry", xhtml,
         "id" -> SHtml.hidden(() => currentAccountVar(acct)),
         "title" -> SHtml.text(currentAccount.title.is, currentAccount.title(_)),
         "submit" -> SHtml.submit("Submit", doSave))
  }

  //view the details from form phase one
  def viewformphaseone(xhtml : NodeSeq) : NodeSeq = {
    val t = Entry.find(S.param("id"))
        t.map(t =>
          bind("entry", xhtml,
           "title" -> t.title.toString,
                )) openOr <span>Not found!</span> <b>Not found!</b>
    }

  //Second phase of the form 

  def addformphasetwo (xhtml : NodeSeq) : NodeSeq = {
    def doSave () = {
      currentAccount.validate match {
        case Nil =>
          currentAccount.save
          S.redirectTo("/results")
        case x => S.error(x)
      }
    }
    val t = Entry.find(S.param("id"))
        t.map(t =>
          bind("entry", xhtml,
          "desc" -> SHtml.text(currentAccount.desc.is, currentAccount.desc(_)),
           "submit" -> SHtml.submit("Submit", doSave) 
                )) openOr <span>Not found!</span> <b>Not found!</b>
  }

  //view the results from both forms
  def viewresults(xhtml : NodeSeq) : NodeSeq = {
    val t = Entry.find(S.param("id"))
        t.map(t =>
          bind("entry", xhtml,
           "title" -> t.title.toString,
           "desc" -> t.desc.toString,
                )) openOr <span>Not found!</span> <b>Not found!</b>
    }
}

Answer 1

a typical school boy error. from the “Exploring Lift book”:

If the form attribute is included with a value of either “POST” or “GET”, then an appropriate form tag will be emitted into the XHTML using the specified submission method. If you omit this tag from a snippet that generates a form, the form elements will display but the form won’t submit.

I had missed the form="POST" tag in my html file. Hence the form was not being submited