Question

I would like to set a value on a DynaForm, which is easy to do in the Action class, but I would like to do so in the JSP itself, by copying a value from the session into the form.

<form-bean name="inputCIDs" type="org.apache.struts.validator.DynaValidatorForm">
  <form-property name="containerIDFormat" type="java.lang.String"/>
</form-bean>

The following Java code works in the JSP, but is there a Struts 1.x or JSTL tag that would do the equivalent action?

<%
    DynaActionForm form = (DynaActionForm) request.getAttribute("inputCIDs");
    form.set("containerIDFormat", session.getAttribute("varInSession"));
%>

The property will be used and changed by the user using a select box

<html:select property="containerIDFormat">
  <html:options collection="containerIDFormats" property="value" labelProperty="description"/>
</html:select>

Environment:
Struts 1.2.4
taglibs 1.1.2
JBoss 4.0.2

Answer 1

Why? The JSP isn’t the appropriate place for this type of work.

<html:hidden property="containerIDFormat" value="${varInSession}"/>

If you just set the form value it won’t survive the submission anyway, because a new request-scoped form will be created. And if it’s a session-scoped form there’s even less reason to do this work in JSP.