Using Multibox in Struts

By: Ivan Lim in Struts Tutorials on 2007-09-22

Multibox is a collection of checkbox. When a single checkbox exists, it should be mapped to a Boolean. Such condition does not apply to collection of checkboxes. Here we map it to a String array


  Recall that Checkbox cannot exist outside a form. Hence start
by defining a form to handle the

checkboxes around the search display list as follows (Simplified
for clarity):




<html:form action="/manageCustomerList">


<c:if test='${not empty
CUSTOMER_SUMMARY_OBJECTS}'>

..


<html-el:multibox property="idSelections">

<c:out value='${customer.id}'/>

</html-el:multibox>


..

</c:if>


</html:form>



  
  Define ManageCustomersForm to hold the checkbox information
and initialize the string array

as follows.




public class ManageCustomersForm extends
ActionForm {

private String[] idSelections;

//getters and setters

public ManageCustomersForm() {

init();

}

protected void init() {

idSelections = new String[] { ""
};

}

..

}



  
  Create a ManageCustomersAction to handle it in the package
struts.example.search. Leave its execute() method empty.

  
  Add an ActionMapping in struts-config.xml. to associate /manageCustomerList.do
with

ManageCustomersAction and ManageCustomersForm Build Deploy and See how the page displays at this point. This
should give you a clear picture of using multibox.