JSP newbie: Servlet and then?

Question

hi
just starting to do a jsp webapp - could manage to have a registration form with a preview button
by clicking on the submit button the action refers to my servlet class which shows me the entered values
but now i want to add a save button - but where do i have to do this? please help me at the moment i do not see any solution :(

Answer 1

This is the perfect example of where you should be using a JSP instead of a servlet.
It is much harder to read in the above format, where as if you look at it like this:
</TABLE>
<FORM ACTION="><a href="imac2\private\test.jsp>">
<BIG><CENTER>
<INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT"
           VALUE="Save">
</CENTER></BIG></FORM>It becomes a lot easier to read, and it is quite clear that the form tag action attribute is a little wonky. you do not put an <a href> tag in the middle of a form tag :-)
I think your form tag should instead be this:
<form action="[path/to/requested/resource]">
or in your terms:
"<FORM ACTION=\"" + "imac2\\private\\test.jsp" + "\">\n" +
In most cases the action of a form points to a servlet to invoke.
You can make it a JSP if you wish, but then the JSP will be handling the form data, and (in the strict model2 architecture) JSPs should only be used for display.
The basic story:
If you are using out.println() to output a whole lot of HTML, you should be using a JSP
If a JSP has a whole bunch of scriptlet code in it, you should be using custom tags or a servlet.
The standard approach (as I showed above) is to submit to a servlet, have the servlet run java code (to save/load/do whatever) and then forward to a JSP to render the response (using the RequestDispatcher)
Hope that clears things up a little,
evnafets