Question

I have a web app which has 3 page views.

1.an index page where all Items in db are listed ,and details of only the Item with latest creationDate are shown.

2.An itemDetails page where details of a selected item are shown.This page also lists all the items in db.

Clicking on a listed item will bring up the itemDetails page.

(These two pages also contain a text input field ,where user can enter a word to search for items matching names.)

3.A search results page,which shows a listing of items that match a search query.

I implemented the the first two pages and created the static public functions.Now,I want to implement the search.I created the function and a results page which lists the search results.

My problem is that ,if I click on an item from search results,it will bring up the itemDetails page which shows details of that item and a listing of all items in db ,since that is how the itemDetails function was implemented.I would rather have the click take me to a page, which shows the details of item and items which were results of the search query. I know it is not possible in the above implementaion since state is not retained between two requests.

So,how should I do this?I cannot think clearly about this.Can you shed some light?

The code is like

package controllers;
...
public class Application extends Controller {
    ...
    public static void index() {
        //all items
        List<Item> items = Item.find("order by creationDate desc").fetch();
        //the latest created item
        Item item = items.get(0);       
        render(items,item);
    }

    public static void itemDetails(Long id) {
        //selected item     
        Item item = Item.findById(id);
        //all items
        List<item> items = Item.find("order by creationDate desc").fetch();
        render(items,item);
    }
    public static void search(String keyword) {
        String kw = keyword.trim();
        String pattern = "%"+kw+"%";
        String query="select distinct item from Item item where item.name like :pattern";
        List<Item> items = Item.find(query).bind("pattern", pattern).fetch();
        render(items);
    }
...
}

index.html page is

#{extends 'main.html' /}
#{set title:'Home' /}
#{if item}
    //show the details of item
#{/if}
#{if items.size()>0}
    #{list items:items, as:'item'}
       <a href="@{Application.itemDetails(item.id)}">${item.name}</a>
    #{/list}
#{/if}
#{else}
        There are currently no items        
#{/else}
#{form @Application.search(keyword)}
  <input type="text" name="keyword" id="keyword" size="18" value=""/>
  <input type="submit" value="search"/>
#{/form}

itemDetails.html page:

is similar to the index page ..for the time being I have copied all the contents of index page .

search page:

#{extends 'main.html' /}
#{set title:'search results' /}

#{if items.size()>0}
    #{list items:items, as:'item'}
       <a href="@{Application.itemDetails(item.id)}">${item.name}</a>
    #{/list}
#{/if}

#{else}
    <div class="empty">
        could not find  items with matching name here.
    </div>  
#{/else}

Answer 1

I see a couple possibilities. First you could add a new public static void itemSearchDetails(Long id, String keyword) action to your controller. Then add a new itemSearchDetails.html page. Finally change the link in the search.html page to <a href="@{Application.itemSearchDetails(item.id)}">${item.name}</a>

Here is the approach I would take. Modify the itemDetails() method to include a keyword parameter.

 public static void itemDetails(Long id, String keyword) {
    //selected item     
    Item item = Item.findById(id);
    List<item> items;
    if (StringUtils.isNotBlank(keyword) ) {
      String query="select distinct item from Item item where item.name like :pattern";
      items = Item.find(query).bind("pattern", pattern).fetch();
    } else {
      items = Item.find("order by creationDate desc").fetch();
    }
    render(items,item);
}

Then change the corresponding calls in the HTML files.