Question

I have this code in my JSP:

<%@taglib uri="http://struts.apache.org/tags-html" prefix="html"%>
..
..
<html:form action="update" >
  ..
  ..
  <html:submit value="delete" />
  <html:submit value="edit" />
  <html:sumit value="update" />
</html:form>

And this in the struts-config.xml file:

<action path="/delete" name="currentTimeForm" input="/viewall.jsp" type="com.action.DeleteProduct">
   <forward name="success" path="/viewall.jsp" />
   <forward name="failure" path="/viewall.jsp" />
</action>

Like the delete action, I have edit and update. It works fine, if I give the name specifically like <html:form action="delete"> but, how to make it dynamically work for update and edit?

Answer 1

You have one form and multiple submit buttons. The problems is that a form can only submit to one action, no matter how many submit buttons you have inside the form.

Three solutions come to mind right now:

1. Have just one action where you submit everything. Once inside the Action class check what button was used to submit the form and perform the appropriate treatment based on that.

<html:form action="modify">
  ..
  ..
  <html:submit value="delete"/>
  <html:submit value="edit" />
  <html:sumit value="update" >
</html:form>

In the ModifyAction.execute(...) method have something like:

if (request.getParameter("delete") != null || request.getParameter("delete.x") != null) {
   //... delete stuff
} else if (request.getParameter("edit") != null || request.getParameter("edit.x") != null) {
   //...edit stuff
} else if (request.getParameter("update") != null || request.getParameter("update.x") != null) {
   //... update stuff
}

2. Have the action attribute of the HTML form changed using JavaScript before submitting the form. You first change the submit buttons to plain ones with click handlers attached:

<html:form action="whatever">
  ..
  ..
  <html:button value="delete" onclick="submitTheForm('delete.do')" />
  <html:button value="edit" onclick="submitTheForm('edit.do')" />
  <html:button value="update" onclick="submitTheForm('update.do')" />
</html:form>

With the handler:

function submitTheForm(theNewAction) {
  var theForm = ... // get your form here, normally: document.forms[0]
  theForm.action = theNewAction;
  theForm.submit();
}

3. Use a DispatchAction (one Action class similar to point 1) but without the need to test for what button was clicked since that’s treated by the DispatchAction.

You just provide three execute methods properly named delete, edit and update. Here is an example that explains how you might do it.

In conclusion: For number 1, I don’t really like those ugly tests…. for number 2, I don’t really like the fact that you have to play with the action form using JavaScript, so I would personally go for number 3.