Question

I’m trying to follow Play!’s documentation for validation. I have a controller with 3 actions:

1. add() – an “add website” form
2. added() – called when the add form is submitted, does the actual adding.
3. edit() – a successful added() call leads to editing the added website (a failed added leads back to the add() form).

When validation fails, I am redirected to the add() action as planned. The #{ifErrors} template works (<h1>Oops…</h1> is displayed) … but there are two problems:

1. The website URL parameter is not “flashed” – in the add form, it doesn’t appear in the appropriate field.
2. Specific errors do not appear – this field remains empty: <span class="error">#{error 'website.url' /}</span>

What am I missing?

My Controller:

public class Sites extends Controller {
    private static final WebsiteRepository websiteRepo = new WebsiteRepository();

    public static void add() {
        render();
    }

    public static void added(@Valid Website website) {
        if (Validation.hasErrors()) {
            Validation.keep();
            params.flash();
            add();
        }

        websiteRepo.save(website);
        edit(website.id);
    }

    public static void edit(long websiteId) {
        Website website = websiteRepo.getById(websiteId);
        render(website);
    }

}

add.html

<div id="addsite">

    <h1>Add a new site</h1>

    #{ifErrors}
   <h1>Oops…</h1>
    #{/ifErrors}

    #{form @added()}

        #{if flash.error}
            <p class="error">
                &{flash.error}
            </p>
        #{/if}
        #{if flash.success}
            <p class="success">
                &{flash.success}
            </p>
        #{/if}


        <p id="url-field">
            <label for="url">URL</label>
            <input type="text" name="website.url" id="url" class="url-field" value="${flash.url}" />
            <span class="error">#{error 'website.url' /}</span>
        </p>

        <p id="add-field">
            <input type="submit" id="add" value="Add" />
        </p>
    #{/form}
</div>

Answer 1

The value format is wrong, for complex objects use:

${flash['website.url']}

Edit: I cloned your repo and you have the following errors:

• In your template replace ${flash[website.url]} with ${flash[‘website.url’]}
• You marked the URL as @Required, but not as @URL; add the @URL annotation and the error will display “Not a valid URL”
• An owner is required, but there is no way to provide one, so there will always be a validation error for this