The Core: Action Beans and JSPs - Stripes...and Java Web Development is Fun Again - page 48

Joe Asks. . .
What If I Don't Like How Messages Are Displayed?

By default, information messages are displayed in a plain
unordered list (<ul> and <li> tags). We'll see how to cus-
tomize this format in Chapter 6 , Customizing Stripes Messages,
on page 121 .

the contact list. Let's see about creating new contacts and updating
existing contacts with the Contact Form page.

3.6 Creating Forms

Forms are a breeze to create in Stripes. There is a Stripes tag for every
type of input field (text field, radio button, and so on) and for submit
buttons. Using these tags instead of plain HTML gives you extra fea-
tures such as repopulating the inputs, highlighting them when they
are in error, and supporting localization.

When the user submits a form, Stripes binds the values in the form
fields to the corresponding properties in the action bean and triggers
the event handler associated with the submit button. You can have
multiple submit buttons without having to do anything special to figure
out which button the user clicked: each button triggers its own event
handler on the action bean.

Input fields have to be associated to properties of an action bean, but
you don't have to copy the properties of a model object to the action
bean. Instead, you put the model object directly in the action bean and
use nested properties.

For example, you can add a Contact property in ContactListActionBean
and create a text field associated with the contact's first name with
<s:text name="contact.firstName"/> . To set the value, Stripes calls getCon-
tact ( ). setFirstName ( ) on the action bean. You don't even have to worry
about a NullPointerException . If getContact ( ) returns null , Stripes creates a
new Contact object for you. This saves you a great deal of code because
you don't have to copy each model property in the action bean and
transfer information back and forth. If your model objects use other