[FormProc-developer] HttpForm, converters and default values

[Dan P. <pr...@3i...>]

First. Thanks for all for the nice work done so far.

I have a small suggestion/fix for a problem I'm having with
default values using HttpForm objects (using the <default> XML tag).
I'm using the HttpForm.process(HttpServletRequest request) method
to validate servlet form data.

I'm having problems getting formproc converters to use the default
value for form elements. Specifically, when I have an element
set up like this using XMLFormConfiguration:

    <element name="my_variable">
        <default>my_default_value</default>
        <converter classname="my.converter.ClassName"/>
    </element>

If the HTTP POST request doesn't contain the parameter "my_variable"
I would like the default value to be sent thru the converter.
But it doesn't work for me.

I found some code in the Form.java class that looks like may be the
cause of my problem.

On line 366, a comment reads:
	// HTTP form fields with empty values will not be sent with the
	// request, thus the formData is null.

The problem is FormData objects can never be null using the process
methods within the HttpForm form class, because a call is ultimately made to
the the FormUtilities.findFormData() to obtain the form data.
The FormUtilities.findFormData will never return null.

So on line 372 where the code tests to see if the default value should
be used for the formData, it will always fail when using the HttpForm class.

As a fix I changed line 372 in Form.java to the following:

        if(formData.getValue() == null || "".equals(formData.getValue())){

Any thoughts on this?

-- 
Dan Prince
pr...@3i...