Request.getParameter is NULL from window.open form submit

Question

Hi all,
We have one portlet application where a jsp page has a link which opens as a child window using the window.open function in javascript.
It has a form and some textboxes with a save submit button.When the save button is clicked the portlet processAction is called but when i try to set the renderrequest all the request.getParameters are null .I have tried both the ActionRequest and HttpServletRequest and both have nul values.
As a result me Save is failing since the request.getparametrs are null.I added the "save" as part of form action URL and its getting passsed but the other, i am unable to fetch.
My Form action is : <form name="saveEntries" id="saveEntries" action="<portlet:actionURL secure="true"/>&action=save&_pageLabel=ABC" method="post">
My process action code is :
Enumeration<String> parameters = request.getParameterNames();
          while(parameters.hasMoreElements()) {
               String parameter = parameters.nextElement();
               String[] values = request.getParameterValues(parameter);
               if(values != null && values.length > 1){
                    response.setRenderParameter(parameter, values);
               } else {
                    response.setRenderParameter(parameter, request.getParameter(parameter));
                    if(request.getParameter(parameter)!=null && "save".equalsIgnoreCase(request.getParameter(parameter))){
                         HttpServletRequest httpRequest = (HttpServletRequest) request.getAttribute("javax.servlet.request");
                         Enumeration parameterNames = httpRequest.getParameterNames();
                         Enumeration<String> httpparameters = parameterNames;
                         while(httpparameters.hasMoreElements()) {
                              String httpparameter = httpparameters.nextElement();
                              String[] httpvalues = httpRequest.getParameterValues(httpparameter);
                              if(httpvalues != null && httpvalues.length > 1){
                                   response.setRenderParameter(httpparameter, httpvalues);
                              } else {
                                   logger.debug("----------------->:ApproveTime else processAction = :Getting HTTP :parameter:"+parameter);
                                   logger.debug("----------------->:ApproveTime else processAction = :Getting HTTP :request.getParameter(parameter):"+request.getParameter(parameter));
                                   response.setRenderParameter(httpparameter, httpRequest.getParameter(httpparameter));
Any help is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Hello,
One potential reason why it isn't working for you is that the Java Portlet specifications (JSR168 and JSR286) don't allow URLs to be manipulated once they are created with a a portlet:xxxURL tag. The reason for this is that the portlet container needs to be able to rewrite the URLs to properly go back through the portal framework (or over WSRP if running the portlet remotely) and to encode all the parameters needed. The portal framework could even change it from a URL to a Javascript action, where simply appending extra "&paramName=someValue" onto the end of the generated URL won't work. So this:
<form action="<portlet:actionURL secure="true"/>&action=save&_pageLabel=ABC" method="post">isn't legal by the portlet specification-- if you want to add parameters to the actionURL, you can by doing this:
<form action="<portlet:actionURL secure="true"><portlet:param name="action" value="save"/><portlet:param name="_pageLabel" value="ABC"/></portlet:actionURL>" method="post">which will add the parameters to the URL in a way that will always work with the portal framework.
One other thing to note- it looks like you're just trying to copy all of the action parameters in the request into render parameters in the response; this can be done much easier like this:
response.setRenderParameters(request.getParameterMap());Kevin