Question

Im still not getting the wicket models. What am I doing wrong here? filterString is still “” when the links onClick method prints it.

class X extends Panel {
    String filterString;
    TextField filterTextField;
    AjaxLink filterLink;

   X(){
       filterString = new String("");
       filterTextField = new TextField<String>("filterTextField", new PropertyModel<String>(this, "filterString"));
       filterLink = new AjaxLink<Void>("filterLink"){
           private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
           @Override
           public void onClick(AjaxRequestTarget target) {              
               params.setFilterString(filterTextField.getModelObject());
               System.out.println("BLABLABLA " + filterTextField.getModelObject());
           }
       };
       //add stuff etc
    }
}

EDIT:

OK, like Juha said using a Form works. Sometimes I feel like creating forms feels like overkill but since this is probably the most Wicket-y thing to do anyway, it is what I will use here. The class would look something like this:

public class X extends Panel {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    public X(String id) {
        super(id);
        add(new FilterForm("logEntryForm"));
    }

    public class FilterForm extends Form{
        private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
        private transient String text; //no need to serialize this
        public FilterForm(String id) {
            super(id);
            final TextField<String> contents = new TextField<String>("contents", new PropertyModel<String>(FilterForm.this, "text")); //textArea for user to enter the filter String
            add(contents);
            add(new AjaxButton("filterButton") {
                private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
                @Override
                protected void onSubmit(AjaxRequestTarget target, Form<?> form) {
                    //do stuff, in my case it was to send the text to the database for filtering out results
                }
            }); 
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Replace AjaxLink with Form and AjaxButton or something that has onSubmit() method. AjaxLink doesn’t do submit so browser doesn’t send the input value to server.