Question

The view.html looks like this, what am I missing because of which the tables are populated with null values ?

                <form class="form-inline form-fields" action="SubmitArticle" method="POST">

                    <fieldset>
                    <div class="control-group success">
                    <label class="control-label" for="input01"><a>Author Name</a></label>
                    <div class="controls">
                    <input type="text" class="input-xlarge" id="input01" name="${article?.author}">
                    </div>
                    </div>


                    <div class="form-actions">
                    <button class="btn btn-success btn-large span2" type="submit" name="commit"> Submit </button>
                    </div>      




                    <div class="control-group right-area success">
                    <label class="control-label" for="input01"><a>Abstract</a></label>
                    <div class="controls">
                    <textarea id="textarea" class="input-xlarge" rows="3" style="width: 498px; height: 283px;" name="${article?.abstract}"></textarea>
                    </div>
                    </div>




                </fieldset>

           </form>

and the action in my controller looks like this:

 public static void SubmitArticle(String article_name, User author, String         article_abstract) {

        Article article = new Article(article_name, author, article_abstract);
        article.save();
              }

Answer 1

<input type="text" class="input-xlarge" id="input01" name="${article?.author}">

The name field is incorrect, the name field should be the same as the attribute it will be mapped to in your object. What you have set as ${article?.author} should be value. Read a little more on Form to Object binding.