Advice for Struts forms with validation

[Nicholas Cheung]

Hi all,

I have the current situation:
I have a struts form, which captures some data from HTML forms. I added some restrictions on it, like xxx field must contain only 6 characters, etc, and I define the validation rules from validate.xml.

For example, the value of the field is originally XXXXYYYY, when I click submit, since it violates the rules defined in validate.xml, an error message is shown, but then, the value of the field disappeared!!!

Any tricks I can use to preserve the field, even though it contains an invalid value? I have already set the forms as session.

I understand that the error handling of Struts engine, it will NOT call the action method defined ActionDispatch nor the validate method inside the form, thus, I have no *programming* ways to save the updated value from the request.

Any ideas are appreicate.

Nick

[somkiat puisungnoen]

If i understand correct in your question :

You can save data in request/session scope

[Nicholas Cheung]

But where can I access to the request/session, if the form data cannot be validated by validator.xml?

If I turn this feature on, if the checking cannot be passed, all the rest *rountines* will be bypass, and the control will be redirect to the JSP with error message (Thus, validate() in Form, and action in ActionDispatcher will NOT be called).

Nick

[somkiat puisungnoen]

But where can I access to the request/session, if the form data cannot be validated by validator.xml?

You can keep input data if validate data in server-side.

[somkiat puisungnoen]

You can save data in request/session in validate() method of ActionForm file

 public ActionErrors validate(ActionMapping arg0, HttpServletRequest arg1) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
 
                request.setAttribute("key", "value");
             
                //or
                request.getSession().setAttirbute("key", "value");
 
 
ActionErrors errors = new ActionErrors();
if(username == null || username.length() == 0) {
errors.add("username",new ActionError("error.no.username"));
}
if(password == null || password.length() == 0) {
errors.add("password", new ActionError("error.no.password"));
}
return errors;
}