html:options default item selection

hi,
i have a html

ptions which is using catValues collection. This collection is loaded with all the categories. The following is the code
<html:select property="contextCode"> <html

ptions collection="catValues" property="categoryCode" labelProperty="categoryName" />
</html:select>
i wanted to set the index of the select box to the second element is there a way to do it in the html options box
Thanks

there are a couple of ways you can do this...

1. break the <html

ptions> into iterations of <html

ption>. track the indexId (with logic:equal or c:if) and generate the <html

ption> with selected="true" attribute

2. if your collection is generated from the action, do form.set("contextCode", secondOptionValue); inside the action before forwarding it to the page.

Thanks
but the problem is that the page is first time initialized. so i have the collection in the session variable and it is used to populate the html

ptions tag. So the page is loaded for the first time and it does not go to the action class. i think the first method is fine. Could you please eloborate how i expand the html

ptions tag.
Thanks

is the second value in the dropdown always a known value? if so, you can initialize your form-property (using the initial="xxx" attribute) to that value. if you can't do this, i'll explain the <html

ption>.

Thanks Alan
its works now. i just set the initial property in my dynaaction form declaration in the struts-config.xml file