Ajax call to pageflow action: how to read action output objects?

Question

I have a pageflow action like:
doSomething()
Customer[] customers = null;
// build the customer array
Forward f = new Forward("success");
f.addActionOutput("customers", customers);
return f;
I am calling this action from my javascript function using AJAX. How do I read the Customer array in my javascript? I am using the DOJO library.
dojo.xhrPost({
     url: "/pageflow.doSomething", // I have URL rewrite rules set up whic forwards to the necessary pageflow function
     content: {
          "key":"value",
          "param":"test",
     handleAs: "JSON",
     handle: function(data,args){
          // WHAT GOES HERE?
});

Answer 1

This isn't so much pageflow-specific, as AJAX specific. For the xhr call to work, the url (whatever it is) needs to output a valid json object structure so the dojo method can interpret it into a javascript object. So, you would need to make the jsp/servlet which is the forward of the pageflow action output that json structure (instead of HTML). There are many utility libraries out there for creating json from java objects -- just search around the internet; or you could create your own. [http://json.org] is handy starting point.
So, as an example, I could imagine your customer json looking like:
"customers" : [
{ "id": 1, "fname": "John", "lname": "Doe", "addr": "1234 5th St. Anytown, CA" },
{ "id": 2, "fname": "Joe", "lname": "Blow", "addr": "6789 10th St. Anytown, CA" }
Then, in the "// WHAT GOES HERE?" section, you would access that array as any javascript array, e.g:
function (data, args) {
var customers = data.customers;
for (var i = 0; i < customers.length; i++) {
alert('Customer ' + customers.id + ' is ' + customers.fname + ' ' + customers.lname + ' at ' + customers.addr);
(Sorry the formatting is messed up, but this forum doesn't seem to maintain whitespace correctly.)
Maybe in this case, you could populate a dojo list or a table grid, or you could just create an HTML structure in the DOM via javascript. It all depends on what you want your user interface to look like.
Greg
Edited by: gsmith on Feb 11, 2009 9:25 AM