Call to action inside c:forEach (simple question)

Question

Here's my problem: I have a pojo called Document, inside this pojo I have an id, the document name and description and the document file.
When displaying my JSP (called DetailProcess), I have a list of documents, that I have to show the user and let him click the document name and start downloading. To display the names I used:
<c:forEach items="${searchProcess.document}" var="document">
     <p>><U><c:out value="${document.name}"/></U>
</c:forEach>Example output:
> Infomations
> Price guide
> Offers
What I want to do now, is call a method that will download the file of the document which is stored inside the database. The method is inside the same Action that generated this JSP (DetailProcessAction). I was told that I had to use a hidden field containing the id of the document, and create a javascript that would receive this id and call the download method.
But I have no ideia how to do this. I mean, placing a hidden field contaning the id, and allowing the user to click the name and send a call for the javascript. Also, I don't think that using javascript might be the best ideia, since some people have it disabled...
Can someone give me a help, and tell me the best way to do this?

Answer 1

Well, you will need to use a link with a document id to uniquely identify the document to download. The link would point to an action on the server that does the download. So, for example, you would want the output in HTML to be:
<p><a href="downloadDocument?name=Informations">Informations</a></p>An example of the JSTL would be:
<c:forEach ${searchProcess.document}" var="document">
  <c:url var="dlPage" value="downloadDocument">
    <c:param name="name" value="${document.name}"/>
  </c:url>
  <p><a href="<c:out value="${dlPage}"/>"><c:out value="${document.name}"/></a></p>
</c:forEach>Then on the receiving side of the request, whatever you map the downloadDocument action to, you would get the name of the document to download from the request parameter:
String documentToDownload = request.getParameter("name");and call the method which causes the document to be downloaded.