form:select tag [chose one option as selected]

Hi! I am doing a project for my university and I have been a while gloogling for a solution about how to select one of the options in a dropdown list, but I was not fortunate.
- I am using Hibernate and Spring MVC.
- I have an entity "patient" which has a field "country" of type String.

In one of the pages I have to edit the values of the patient and I need that the dropdown list is initialized with the correct value. I know how to retrieve the data and all that,
Which I do not know is how to translate:

Code:

---

<select>
  ........
  <option value="Greece" selected="selected">Greece</option>
  .........
</select>

---

What I have now and is working is:

Code:

---

<form:form commandName="commandPatient" method="POST" action="editPatient">
.................
<form:select path="country">
  <form:options items='${countries}'/>   
</form:select>
.................
</form:form>

---

So my question is: how do I select the value I want for the country?
I also have declared in my controller a variable with the desired value I want:

Code:

---

    protected Map referenceData(HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
            Map<Object, Object> dataMap = new HashMap<Object, Object>();
            dataMap.put("country", "Greece");
        return dataMap;
    }

---

I know there is a solution using

Code:

---

<spring:bind path="...">
      <select name="${status.expression}">
          <c:forEach items="${countries}" var="c">
........................
        </c:forEach>
      </select>
</spring>

---

as indicated in: http://www.jroller.com/raible/entry/...ith_spring_mvc
but I prefer to use the form:select tag
I just wished there was a "selected" tag
"Thank you for your help"

on your form backing class, you can set the country

eg.

public Class Form {
private String country;

//setter and getter methods for each member variables
}


when you create form backing object, you can set the value of country .. spring tags will automatically map the correct selected value from the drop down list.

surajz

Haha! :D
Thank you surajz!

Ok, thread [solved].

If someone reads the post, this is what I did:

I have a newPatient.jsp with a form with many fields, one of them is a list of countries:

Code:

---

<form:form commandName="commandPatient" method="POST" action="editPatient">
......................
  <form:select path="country">
      <form:options items='${countries}'/>
  </form:select>
.............
</form:form>

---

newPatient.jsp has a controler called EditPatientControler.java where I override the necessary methods to get my purpose:

Code:

---

public class EditPatientControler extends SimpleFormController {
    public EditPatientControler() {
    }

    @Override
    protected Object formBackingObject(HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
            Patient p = new Patient();
            p.setCountry("Greece");
            return p;
    }

    @Override
    protected Map referenceData(HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
            Map<Object, Object> dataMap = new HashMap<Object, Object>();
            dataMap.put("countries", Arrays.asList("Afghanistan","Aringland Islands","Albania","Algeria", .............................));
        return dataMap;
    }


    @Override
    protected void doSubmitAction(Object command) throws Exception {
        try {
            InitialContext ic = new InitialContext();
            final QueueConnectionFactory factory =
                      (QueueConnectionFactory) ic.lookup("jms/PatientFactory");
            final QueueConnection connection = factory.createQueueConnection();
            final QueueSession session = connection.createQueueSession(false,
                    QueueSession.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE);
            Patient p = (Patient) command;
            final Queue savePatientQueue = (Queue) ic.lookup("jms/SavePatient");
            MessageProducer messageProducer = session.createProducer(savePatientQueue);
            ObjectMessage message = session.createObjectMessage();
            message.setObject(p);
            messageProducer.send(message);
            messageProducer.close();
            connection.close();
        } catch (JMSException ex) {
            ex.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

---

As you can see, I did what surajz advised me inside the method "formBackingObject(....){}"
returning a patient with the field country set to "Greece". I don't really want Greece there, but it is just an example.
I understand now that in the .jsp

Code:

---

<form:select path="country">

---

retrieves the value of the value "country".
I have to keep working on my project now :)
"Thank you again"