Html:link not working in struts project driving me mad, please help...

Question

Afternoon all,
Can anyone help me with an issue I'm having with my first struts project, I'm learning as I go.
Anyway, I'm trying to create a bog standard hypertext link which passes a value back to a specified struts action. The flow of the application
is as follows:
1) search.jsp
User enters a name and postcode to search on, then click submit
2) searchAction
Struts action 'search' is called and does the search in a back-end db.
Each result found from search is created as a javabean (named resultsBean), and added to a list object. The list object is set as a request
attribute named 'SearchResults'.
The action is then forwarded on to another jsp page named results.jsp
3) results.jsp
The results.jsp page retrieves the list object from the 'SearchResults' attribute and loops through each entry
in the list and converts each entry to the 'resultsBean' javabean object.
Each resultsBean object has a getVirtualID method which stores a string value. This value is retrieved and a hypertext link is created which
passes this value on to another struts action named 'select'.
When this link is clicked on, the select struts action is called and the value passed as a parameter is retrieved.
This is the part I can't get to work, I can't get the link to render properly. When I click the link the select action retrieves
& lt;%= resultsBean.getVirtualID() & gt; as the value of the parameter 'vid' instead of the value stored in the getVirtualID method of the resultsBean.
Listed below is the code from my results.jsp page. If anyone can help me get this to work I would be very grateful.
Thanks in advance,
Alex
results.jsp code
<%
   List searchResults = (List)portletRequest.getPortletSession().getAttribute("SearchResults");
%>
<div id="table_layout" style="width: 713px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px;">
  <div id="row">
    <div id="column"><img src='<%= response.encodeURL("/images/results.gif") %>' alt="" width="223" height="159" border="0" /></div>
     <div id="column" style="width: 30px;"></div>
     <div id="column">
      <div id="table_layout" style="width: 460px;">
        <div id="row" style="width: 430px; border-bottom: 1px solid #4e137d;">
          <div id="column" style="width: 155px;">Name</div>
          <div id="column" style="width: 10px;"> </div>
          <div id="column" style="width: 130px;">Address</div>
          <div id="column" style="width: 10px;"> </div>
          <div id="column" align="right" style="width: 120px;">References</div>
        </div>
<% if (searchResults.size() > 0) {
       Iterator it = searchResults.subList(0, searchResults.size()).iterator();
       ResultsBean resultsBean = new ResultsBean();
       while (it.hasNext()) {
            resultsBean = (ResultsBean)it.next(); %>
        <div id="row" style="padding: 5px 0px 10px 0px;">
          <div id="column" style="width: 155px;"><html:link styleClass="results"  page="/select.do?vid='<%= resultsBean.getVirtualId() %>'" title="<%= resultsBean.getFullName() %>"><%= resultsBean.getFullName() %></html:link></div>
          <div id="column" style="width: 10px;"></div>
          <div id="column" style="width: 130px;"><%= resultsBean.getFullAddress() %></div>
          <div id="column" style="width: 10px;"></div>
          <div id="column" align="right" style="width: 120px;"><%= resultsBean.getReferenceIcons(portletResponse) %></div>
          <div id="column" style="width: 13px;"></div>
          <div id="column" style="width: 22px;"><input id="<%= resultsBean.getVirtualId() %>" name="ckbox" type="checkbox" value="" title="tick to select for merging" style="border: 0px solid #ffffff;"></div>
        </div>
<%     }
   } %>
       </div>
     </div>
  </div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<html:link forward="/searchpage">Return to search page</html:link>

Answer 1

If you have part of an attribute dynamic, you need to make the entire attribute an expression.
ie instead of
page="/select.do?vid='<%= resultsBean.getVirtualId() %>'"
it has to be
page="<%= "/select.do?vid=" + resultsBean.getVirtualID() %>"
However for my approach, I would aim for zero scriptlets, and use the struts tags even more. For instance instead of an iterator, use the struts logic:iterate tag (or the JSTL c:forEach>
Also instead of div tags, I would use html table tags - <table> <tr><td> etc etc. Thats what its for right?
Here is at least some of it rewritten with struts tags.
I left out the div tags so I could focus on the "important" stuff.
<logic:iterate id="resultsBean" name="SearchResults">
  <html:link styleClass="results"  page="/select.do" paramId="vid" paramName = "resultsBean" paramProperty="virtualId">
    <bean:write name="resultsBean" property="fullName"/>
  </html:link>
  <bean:write name="resultsBean" property="fullAddress"/>
<%= resultsBean.getReferenceIcons(portletResponse) %>
<input id="<%= resultsBean.getVirtualId() %>" name="ckbox" type="checkbox" value="" title="tick to select for merging" style="border: 0px solid #ffffff;">
</logic:iterate>I'm not entirely certain what you are doing with that checkbox at the end. They all have the same name, but no value. You couldn't identify at the server end which one was clicked.
Hope this helps some,
evnafets