Programatic actionForm access from JSP

Question

I am migrating an application that uses a lot of JavaScript that, in turn, uses embedded Java to initialize JavaScript variables, within the JSPs (see example below)
In the migrated code, using a page flow, I initialize an actionForm that is used to preset values into a <netui:form>. However I also need to access (reuse) the actionForm to initialize JavaScript variables with values contained in the actionForm.
Is there a way to access the actionForm programatically (with Java code) from a JSP?
Example
=======
In the example below, the cities JavaScript variable is initialized from the cityList Java variable.
Note that this example is very simple. The real code complexity precludes from initializing a hidden form variable and using it from JavaScript.
Eg: (My.jsp)
<% String[] cityList = (String[]) request.getAttribute( "city_names" );
%>
<script>
var cities = new Array();
<% for ( int i = 0; i < cityList.length; i++ )
%> cities[<%= i %>] = "<%= cityList[i] %>";
<% } %>
</script>
What I am trying to do is to replace
String[] cityList = (String[]) request.getAttribute( "city_names" )
by something like this
String[] cityList = (String[]) request.getAttribute( "{actionForm.cityNames}" )
Thanks

Answer 1

Hi
Im not sure if it works but you might try
<Forward returned />.addOutputForm method
Then the form bean is also available in request under the name determined by PageFlowUtils.getFormBeanName(ActionForm, HttpServletRequest).
The action form should be correctly picked up elsewhere without needing any changes
See the How Do i: Use Multiple forms in a JSP in workshop help under pageflows and the Forward class javadocs
regards
deepak