How to Pass <Select> and <input> data from View to a Controller (Spring MVC)

Question

Hello hope all is well,

I am trying to pass data that is filled by a user in a view, and use that data to perform a query. The following is the HTML code. NOTE: Using Thymeleaf not JSP

<form class="form-horizontal" action="#" data-th-action="@{/waterquality/data/search-results}" data-th-object="${groundWater}" method="get" accept-charset="utf-8">

    <label id = "sectionLabel" style="text-align: right; width:109px">SECTION</label>
    <select id = "section" style = "height: 25px; width: 160px; color: black">
        <option data-th-replace="fragments/form-elements/ground-water-section-select-options :: ground-water-section-select-options">List of Sections</option>
    </select>

    <label id = "formationLabel" style="text-align: right; width:109px">Formation</label>
    <input type = "text" id = "formation" />

    <button type="submit" class="send_btn1" name="action" data-th-value="#{button.action.search}"   data-th-text="#{button.label.search}"  >Search</button>

</form>

When the submit button is pressed it correctly calls the controller. The following is my Controller code:

@Controller
@RequestMapping(value = "/waterquality/data")
public class GroundWaterSearchController {

    static Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(GroundWaterSearchController.class);

    @Autowired
    private GroundWaterService groundWaterService;

    @RequestMapping(value = {"", "/", "/search"}, method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String showSearchForm(Model model) {

        DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss");
        Date date = new Date();
        String time = dateFormat.format(date);
        model.addAttribute("time", time);

        GroundWater groundWater = new GroundWater();
        model.addAttribute("groundWater", groundWater);

        return "waterquality/data/ground-water-search";

    }


    @RequestMapping(value = {"/search-results"}, method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String processSearch(@Valid @ModelAttribute GroundWater groundWater,
            Model model,
            @RequestParam(value = "startPostion", defaultValue = "0") Integer startPostion,) {

        List<GroundWater> groundWaters = new ArrayList<GroundWater>();
        groundWaters = groundWaterService.fetchListByNativeSqlQuery(groundWater, viewData);

        model.addAttribute("groundWaters", groundWaters);

        return "waterquality/data/ground-water-search-results";
    }
}

I want to be able to have the data from the view in a map or list so I can send the data to a method fetchListByNativeSqlQuery. However I'm not sure how to do this. Can someone please provide an example on how I would send the data from my View to the controller, and from the controller to the method fetchListByNativeSqlQuery.

Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks a ton in advance!

Answer 1

To pass input from the view to the controller you need a name attribute. For example you need something like:

For an input tag:

<input name="formation" type="text" id="formation">

For a select you need a value for each option:

<select name="section" id="section" style="height: 25px; width: 160px; color: black">
    <option value="someValue" data-th-replace="fragments/form-elements/ground-water-section-select-options :: ground-water-section-select-options">List of Sections</option>
</select>

Then in the controller, you can use @RequestParam with the value being equal to the name you specified in the view. For example:

@RequestParam(value="section") String sectionValue, @RequestParam(value="formation") String formation

From this, you should be able to make a map or a list with the data depending on what you're doing in fetchListByNativeSqlQuery().