Working with Stripes, Javascript and Ajax

Question

This is my jsp page (which is a modal page to another jsp page ) which contains a table, a form, a javascript and ajax .

<%@ include file="/WEB-INF/includes/taglibs.jsp" %>
<script type="text/javascript"
        src="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/ajax/prototype.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" xml:space="preserve">

function invoke(form, event, container) {        
        var params = Form.serialize(form, {submit:event});
        new Ajax.Updater(container, form.action, {method:'post', parameters:params});
    }
</script>

<display:table name="actionBean.currentAidApplicantYear.comments" id="result" class="maui">
    <display:column property="lastUpdatedBy" title="Last Updated By" sortable="true"/>
    <display:column property="lastUpdatedTimestamp" title="Last Updated Date"
                    format="{0,date,MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm}" sortable="true"/>
    <display:column property="comment" title="Memo"/>
</display:table>
<div class="actionBar" style="margin-top: 20px; text-align: center;">
    <stripes:form beanclass="${actionBean.class}" id="addMemoForm" method="POST">
                <tags:labelAndValue label="Comment" name="comment" >
                    <stripes:textarea id="commentTextArea" name="comment.comment" cols="75"/>
                </tags:labelAndValue>
        <stripes:submit name="saveCommentAjax" value="Add Memo"
                        onclick="invoke(this.form, this.name, 'result');"/>
        <stripes:hidden name="id" />        
    </stripes:form>  
</div>

And this is part of the action bean which extends another class which in turn implements ActionBean, ValidationErrorHandler

Public class  CommentsTab extends AbstractAidApplicantTab {
private AidApplicantYearComment comment;

    public AidApplicantYearComment getComment() {
        return comment;
    }
    public void setComment(AidApplicantYearComment comment) {
        this.comment = comment;
    }
public Resolution saveCommentAjax(){
                    String result = String.valueOf(comment.getComment());
                    comment.save();//build up the comment object 
//by this time the comment object will save the string comment, user who updates it and a //time stamp. Those are the three variables that are displayed on the jsp table.
        return new StreamingResolution("text/html",new StringReader(result));}
//here instead of returning just a string “result” I prefer to return a comment object or //the three values I wanted to display on a table. How can I do that?

When the submit button is clicked I use an ajax to call an action bean’s method to do some operation and the function returns a streaming resolution (StreamingResolution("text/html",new StringReader(result));). Once I get the response I wanted to refresh the table without refreshing the page. However, in order to do that I have to get an object (a comment object) from the response not a text (or may be an array of Strings which might contain the values of the object)

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you

Answer 1

Use a JavaScriptResolution, or (better IMHO),

• transform your Comment object into a JSON String (using one of the myriads of free Java JSON encoders available),
• return that JSON String as a StreamingResolution
• use the native JSON functions in the browser (if you target recent browsers) or a JS library containing a JSON parsing function to transform the JSON string into a JavaScript object.