Strange setup bean behaviour with validation

[Christian]

Hi,
I've stumbeld across a strange behaviour of the new setup bean action element when it is used togehter with validation. Don't know if it's a bug or if I do something wrong(which might be more probable ) 8).

When I define my workflows with the new setup bean action element and the form is redisplayed for correction because a validation error occured, no error messages are shown. When I replace the setup bean action with a "normal" action state for the setupForm method of my FormAction, error messages are shown correctly.

Here is the code:
The flow definition that doesn't work:

<webflow id="loginFlow" start-state="loginForm. view">
	
	<view-state id="loginForm.view" view="loginForm">
		<setup bean="flow.login.LoginAction" method="setupForm"/>
		<transition on="submit" to="launch.project.flow">		
            <action bean="flow.login.LoginAction" method="bindAndValidate"/>
         </transition>
		 <transition on="error" to="loginForm.view"/>
	</view-state>
		
	<end-state id="launch.project.flow" view="redirect&#58;/flowController?_flowId=projectFlow"/>

</webflow>

The working definition:

<webflow id="loginFlow" start-state="setupForm.action">

	<action-state id="setupForm.action">
		<action bean="flow.login.LoginAction" method="setupForm"/>
		<transition on="success" to="loginForm.view"/>
	</action-state>
	
	<view-state id="loginForm.view" view="loginForm">
		<transition on="submit" to="launch.project.flow">		
            <action bean="flow.login.LoginAction" method="bindAndValidate"/>
         </transition>
		 <transition on="error" to="loginForm.view"/>
	</view-state>
		
	<end-state id="launch.project.flow" view="redirect&#58;/flowController?_flowId=projectFlow"/>

</webflow>

the JSP page:

<FORM method="POST" action="flowController" >			
			<%-- needed to keep track of the flow-status of the client --%>
			<INPUT type="hidden" name="_flowExecutionId" value="<c&#58;out value="$&#123;flowExecutionId&#125;"/>">
				
			<%-- Spring tags to bind the entered values automatically to bean attributes and to print error messages  --%>
			
			<TABLE border="0">

					<tr>
						<td>
					<spring&#58;bind path="formBean.login">
						<input type="text" name="<c&#58;out value="$&#123;status.expression&#125;" />" value="<c&#58;out value="$&#123;status.value&#125;" />"/>
						<DIV style="color&#58;red">	
							<c&#58;forEach var="error" items="$&#123;status.errorMessages&#125;"><li><c&#58;out value="$&#123;error&#125;" /></li></c&#58;forEach>
						</DIV>
					</spring&#58;bind>
					</td>
					</tr>
					<tr>
						<td>
						<spring&#58;bind path="formBean.password">
						<input type="password" name="<c&#58;out value="$&#123;status.expression&#125;" />" value="<c&#58;out value="$&#123;status.value&#125;" />"/>
						<DIV style="color&#58;red">	
							<c&#58;forEach var="error" items="$&#123;status.errorMessages&#125;"><li><c&#58;out value="$&#123;error&#125;" /></li></c&#58;forEach>
						</DIV>
					</spring&#58;bind>
					</td>
					</tr>
				
				<TR>
					<TD colspan="2" align="right">
						<%-- _eventId is used to choose the next transition --%>
						<INPUT type="submit" value="submit" name="_eventId"></TD>
				</TR>
			</TABLE>
						
		</FORM>

My Validator:

...
public void validate(Object obj, Errors errors) {
        LoginFormBean loginData = (LoginFormBean)obj;
        validateLoginAndPassword(loginData, errors);
    }
    
    private void validateLoginAndPassword(LoginFormBean loginData, Errors errors) {
        LogFactory.getLogger(this).debug("Validating login data");
        
        ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors,"login",null,"Please specify your login name");
        ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors,"password",null,"Please specify your password");
        
    }
...

Any ideas?

Chris

[Christian]

Damn it, just stumbled across this line in the Preview 4 - Completed Changes change log:

Fixed problem with 'form states': view states that use a setup action and a bindAndValidate when transitioning out of the state. The validation errors generated by the bindAndValidate were being overwritten by the setupForm action when the view state re-entered.

think that's it, i will download the latest version from the CVS now and try again.[/quote]

[klr8]

Note that SWF has moved out of the spring sandbox and is now in its own repository (spring-projects/spring-webflow) at SourceForge (http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.p...pring-webflow/).

The migration is still in progress. In particular the Portlet related code has yet to find a new home.

Anyway, to build it, you have to pull in ALL the sub-modules of "spring-projects". Once that is done, you can do "build dist" in the spring-webflow module to build a SWF jar that you can use with the existing webflow-support.jar.

Erwin

[Christian]

Is there a complete PR4 jar in the CVS? I've checked out the whole spring-projects in Eclipse and then tried to run the build.xml file in the spring-webflow folder. The build fails with the following error message:

common-targets.xml: 297: Unable to find typedef antlib:fr.jayasoft.ivy.ant:resolve

If there is a quick fix for this or a description of how to build the project with Eclipse please post an answer. Otherwise I will wait for PR4 .

Christian

[Keith Donald]

You're on the right track. The new build system using ivy for dependency management. To build successfully from ant, you need ivy-1.1.jar in your ant classpath.