Develop Reference

Update the database from submit option

I have a jsp page having a 'submit' option for input.On clicking it i want to update the value of a table called tbIndividual.What can be the best approach to do it?
On jsp page i have somthing like this :
User Name : <%=rs.getString(2)%>
First Name : <%=rs.getString(4)%>
Last Name : <%=rs.getString(5)%>
Email Id : <%=rs.getString(6)%>
Contact : <%=rs.getString(7)%>
<input type="submit" value="ADD"></input>
And now i want to update the value of status of that particular individual from 'NO' to 'WAIT' state.On click of this submit button.
Is making new servlet for this task a good option or doing the code in jsp a better one ?
If i need to make a new servlet then what will be the code for it on jsp page .?Please help.

If you are trying to learn servlet with this project then you should create a separate servlet where you will perform your business logic (e.g addition of element in Db) and jsp should be kept away from business logic because role of jsp is to render the output not to produce the output.
If this is a project for production purposes, then you should ( IMO you must ) opt some web framework. As framework will reduce your effort, headache and increase productivity.

First of all, there are certain things you need to understand while developing web applications in Java. I have a few recommendations and inputs
Please don't use Scriptlets. Scriptlets are deprecated and they make your code clumsy and the maintainance will be hard. Use JSTL
You need to create a form in your html to have a set of variables to push them to the server on clicking submit button. The form will have an action attribute which contains the URL where the request should be sent
Create a Servlet and map with the action URL and write the doPost method which can receive the form parameters and do the business logic whatever changing the status from NO to WAIT or anything else
Please take a note that you need to have Session variables in order to have the store the data in between requests from the same client. eg browser.
Is making new servlet for this task a good option or doing the code in jsp a better one ?
Writing a new servlet is a good option, than doing the business logic in jsp page. jsp is meant for presentation, just view. They shouldn't be used to perform business logic
If i need to make a new servlet then what will be the code for it on jsp page .?
JSP should just have all the necessary html elements and attributes like form, action attribute etc.. to post the parameters in the request to the action URL. Please note the method attribute of form. You should use HTTP POST method for posting form parameters to the server
Note : Finally, Writing Servlets are also NOT recommended. Instead, you should opt for webframeworks like Spring MVC , Struts etc. Please go through the link to understand about web frameworks answered by #BaluC
Hope this clarifies.

JSF Link not working (with Primefaces)

Sorry, really really basic question...
I've got a list of 'messageboard threads' that I display on a page. I want to be able to click on one of them and redirect to a page which displays the details for that thread. I'm struggling despite googling it for a while...
(I'm using PrimeFaces by the way)
Here's the relevant code from my 'list' page:
<p:commandLink value="#{thread.title}" action="#{messageboardBean.showThread()}">
<f:param name="threadId" value="#{thread.id}" />
</p:commandLink>
(it's in an h:form element)
This is part of my named bean (other methods work fine)
...
#ManagedProperty(value="#{param.threadId}")
private Long threadId;
...
public String showThread() {
System.out.println("id is " + getThreadId());
return "messageboard/list";
}
...
As you can see my method isn't implemented yet, but it's not even being called. Please can someone tell me why?
I tried with an h:link too by the way, same (or similar) problem.
Thanks!
UPDATE - Solved
Thanks to the help below, here is my solution (I've renamed 'messageboard' to 'discussion').
The link is generated using this code
value: what to display on the page, in my case the title of my discussion
outcome: refers to edit.xhtml, the faces file I want to go to
...and the [request] param is going to be called 'threadId' and has a value of the id attribute in my 'thread' object.
In the edit.xhtml page, I've got this
<f:metadata>
<f:viewParam name="threadId" value="#{viewDiscussionBean.threadId}" />
<f:event type="preRenderView" listener="#{viewDiscussionBean.loadDiscussion}" />
</f:metadata>
Note that 'threadId' is the same as the param name in the first page, and it is bound to my viewDiscussionBean's threadId property.
Then once the params are all set on my bean, I call the loadDiscussion method of my viewDiscussionBean. Since it now has the threadId property, it's able to do this (see below)
My viewDiscussionBean has the following managed property (I think the viewParam tag sets this, rather than the other way around).
#ManagedProperty(value="#{param.threadId}")
private Long threadId;
private Discussion thread;
So once that's set, this method is able to run (because it now has an ID)
public String loadDiscussion() {
thread = mbDao.find(threadId);
return "edit";
}
This just uses a DAO (using Hibernate) to look up the discussion thread with that ID, and set it in the bean. And then...
In my edit.xhtml page, I can access values in the discussion thread using things like
<h:outputText value="#{viewDiscussionBean.thread.message}" />
Voila! Thanks.

There are many possible caused for an UICommand action not being invoked. You can find them all here: commandButton/commandLink/ajax action/listener method not invoked or input value not updated Among others a missing form, a nested form, or a conversion/validation error elsewhere in the form, being in a datatable whose datamodel is not properly preserved, etcetera.
As to your particular functional requirement, better is to use a <h:link>. A command link issues a POST request which does in your particular case not end up with a bookmarkable URL with the thread ID in the URL. A <h:link> creates a fullworthy link which is bookmarkable and searchbot-indexable.
E.g.
<h:link value="#{thread.title}" outcome="messageboard/list">
<f:param name="threadId" value="#{thread.id}" />
</h:link>
This doesn't require a form nor an action method. You only need to move that #ManagedProperty to the bean associated with messageboard/list, or maybe replace it by <f:viewParam> in the messageboard/list view which allows for finer-grained validation/conversion.
See also:
Communication in JSF2 - Processing GET request parameters
When should I use h:outputLink instead of h:commandLink?
ViewParam vs #ManagedProperty(value = "#{param.id}")

Your best bet it probably to go with BalusC's answer and use <h:link>. However, I have some thoughts about the behavior you're seeing.
Primefaces <p:commandLink> (like <p:commandButton>) uses ajax by default. Therefore, there won't be any actual navigation resulting from returning an outcome from your action. This could make it look like your action isn't being invoked. Try adding ajax=false to your <p:commandLink>.
When using <h:link>, navigation is resolved when the link is rendered rather than when it's clicked. Modifying your example:
<h:link value="#{thread.title}" outcome="#{messageboardBean.showThread()}">
<f:param name="threadId" value="#{thread.id}" />
</h:link>
showThread() will be called (I think) when the view containing the link is being rendered. If you're not checking at the right time, this may also make it look like the method is being called.
In both cases, this doesn't explain why you wouldn't see the message to System.out at all, but I know I've tried that thinking it was fail-safe and still not seen the output, which all depends on your container, configuration, how you launched it, etc.

jsf with popups, problems with same viewid

I've a tomcat application with jsf 1.1
Case:
My application has a jsp (let name it /create.jsp) that contains a form to create a Business Object (imagine type person). One of the attributes of this Business Object is a relation to itself (the BO person, has an attribute father, that is also of type person). For this porpose, in the jsp, I have a selectable, and a button. The button enables to create new Business Object (in this case, a person). Therefore, the jsp show in the popup is the same that the one shown in the main window
Problem:
I'm facing wrong behaviours in the main window.
Cause:
I've studied the case, and the reason of the problem is the ids of the views stored in the server. When the users requires a new page, the server creates a view (ViewRoot) and stores it at the session. The jsp path is used as the id of the View. When the user submits a form, it will rehuse the same view stored in the session.
The problem in my case is that the popup ViewRoot, and the main window ViewRoot share the same id. So when the main window is shown, its viewRoot will be stored (let say id /create.jsp), but, when the popup is shown, its viewRoot will overwrite the main one in session. After closing the popup, the user will try to submit the main page, but in the server, there is no such a ViewRoot.
Possible Solution:
I've been thinking on changing the ViewRoot id creation, but I thing that this is not feasible (at least if I don't modify the jsf library).
---OLD TEXT---
I have a jsp with a form (let name it /create.jsp), that opens a popup window. This popup will also use /create.jsp .
Due to that JSF view-id, is fomed by the jsp path, both pages will share same id. So when the popup is displayed, the view stored in the session for the main page is overwritten by the new one. Because of this, the application is not working properly.
Is there any way to change the ids of the views? anyone has any solution?
Thanks

You probably want to look into using a subview . You can assign a name-space within this that will essentially create a new namespace within the page. In facelets that would be:
<f:view id="main">
<ui:include "myOtherJsp.jsp" /> <!-- This containing a subview -->
</f:view>
Alternatively I think you may just need to separate the page into multiple views:
<f:view id="mainpage">
<p>Page content</p>
</f:view>
<f:view id="popup">
<p>My Popup</p>
</f:view>
I don't know the specifics of your application, but I can't see a situation where there's a reason to not have multiple views/forms. I'm guessing separation will fix your problem. You can use some elements of JSF outside the view ( so there's no reason to use a single view per page unless you're forced.
Caveat: I'm a JSF2 developer for the most part and I haven't done a JSF1.1 app in a long time.

My final solution is the following:
Create a jsp name popup_create.jsp, that only contains an inlcude to the create.jsp
Duplicate create.jsp entry in facesconfig with popup_create.jsp
Create a ViewHandler (add it in config) with an extension of ViewHandlerImpl, where createView & restoreView methods are ovewritten, so that the viewId, in case that is create.jsp, and we are in a popup, it will modify the viewId to poup_create.jsp.
As I think this may be done in a more elegant way, it is the only way I've found.

JSF 2 - which ways exist to find back to the calling page?

My web application has two search pages - search1.jsf and search2.jsf - which share the same bean which in turn calls a result page - result.jsf.
So both search pages have a commandButton
<h:commandButton value="Commit" action="#{search.commit}" />
The "search" bean then processes the search and forwards to the result page using
target = "result?faces-redirect=true";
Now the result.jsf doesn't know which search page has been used. How can I pass the calling page so that the called page is able to render a link back to the calling page?
Using the browser back button (or Javascript code) to go back in the history has the disadvantage that the user, after browsing through the results, only would go back one page in the results instead of going 'up' to the search parameter form.
Options I see so far are:
pass the caller page name through the chain to the result page, using <f:param> or action="#{search.commit(name_of_calling_page)}
put all 'search parameter' forms in one JSF page and conditionally switch the content
Or is there a JSF functions which returns the name of the calling JSF page?

You're redirecting to the result page which suggests that you're using a session scoped bean to hold the results (a request/view scoped simply doesn't survive redirects). Ignoring the fact that this is a poor/odd approach, you could just store the search type in that bean as well?
Anyway, easiest and cleanest is to use a single master view with a single master view scoped bean and conditionally display search1.xhtml, search2.xhtml and results.xhtml using <ui:include> in the master view.
search.xhtml
<ui:fragment rendered="#{empty search.results}">
<ui:include src="/WEB-INF/search#{search.type}.xhtml" />
</ui:fragment>
<ui:fragment rendered="#{not empty search.results}">
<ui:include src="/WEB-INF/results.xhtml" />
</ui:fragment>
As long as you return void or null in action methods, the same view scoped bean will be retained on every subsequent (and non-redirected!) request. If you intend to make it a GET instead of POST (so that it's bookmarkable and back-button-navigable such as Google), then you should actually change the forms and view parameters to make it GET instead of POST.

webpage expired when back button pressed on JSF(Richfaces) submit

My title maybe confusing so please read on. I'm using the following technologies if you may. Spring, Hibernate, JSF (RichFaces), MySQL, Internet Explorer.
I have a List of items which is displayed in a RichFaces datatable like so:
item a
item b
item c
item d
item e
On the same page I have the following buttons: search, edit, add, delete and new.
When an user enters a search string, e.g. "item c", and press search button, then it displays a list of matching items, e.g:
item c
When the user presses the new button, the request will be redirected to another page using:
FacesContext facesContext = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
facesContext.getExternalContext().redirect(page + ".jsf" );
When the browser back button of IE is been pressed on that page, the page displays "web page expired". What is this and how can I avoid this?

web page expired
You will get this error when you're trying to obtain a non-cached POST request from the browser history. This behaviour is fully expected. To fix this "problem", you need to either turn the cache on or to replace POST by GET.
Enabling the browser cache is actually easy: just remove the Cache-Control: no-cache and related headers from the HTTP response of the POST request in question. The enduser will then only get a warning dialog that the POST data will be resent to the server, which in case of fully non-idempotent requests like placing an order or deleting an item is really not desirable. Replacing POST by GET is then a better solution. Getting searchresults (like as Google does) should really be done by GET.
Replacing POST by GET isn't easy in JSF prior to version 2.0. Best what you can do is to fire a redirect after the POST and pass the data of interest as request parameter which you retain from #{param} as managed property (more recommended) or store the data of interest in session scope (not recommended). A completely different alternative is to replace the JSF <h:form> by a simple HTML <form action="searchresults.jsf"> and do the search job in a #PostConstruct method in the backing bean associated with searchresults.jsf, after the submitted query has been gathered as managed property or from request parameter map.