Object attributes becoming NULL after form submission

[bigadjaye]

Hey all,

I have a form which is used to edit an object. The form does not contain very attribute in the object. My problem is that when I submit my form, any attribute of my object that does not have a corresponding request parameter gets set to NULL when the object is saved?

Is there a way around this? I do not want to have to fill my form with hidden input fields for those object attributes which I don't want the user to be able to edit simply to prevent them from being set to NULL.

My annotated controller:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/task/taskEdit.htm")
public class TaskEditController {
	
	private TaskService taskService;
	private UserService userService;
	private TaskValidator validator;
	
	@Autowired
	public TaskEditController(TaskService taskService, TaskValidator validator) {
		this.taskService = taskService;
		this.validator = validator;
	}
	
	@InitBinder
	public void initBinder(WebDataBinder dataBinder) {
		SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yy HH:mm");
		dataBinder.registerCustomEditor(Date.class, new CustomDateEditor(dateFormat, false));
	}
	
	@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
	public String setupForm(@RequestParam(required = true, value = "id") String id, ModelMap model) {
		AssignmentTask task = (AssignmentTask) taskService.findById(Long.parseLong(id));
		model.addAttribute("task", task);
		return "/ticket/taskEdit";
	}
	
	@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
	public String processSubmit(@ModelAttribute("task") AssignmentTask task, BindingResult result, HttpServletRequest request) {
		validator.validate(task, result);
		if(result.hasErrors()) {
			return "/ticket/taskEdit";
		} else {
			task.setUpdateUser(userService.getCurrentUser());
			task.setUpdatedTime(new Date());
			taskService.save(task);
		}
		return "status/success";
	}
}

Thanks in advance

[bigadjaye]

It seems adding @SessionAttributes("task") annotation and adding the arg SessionStatus status to my processSubmit method and setting status.setComplete() has solved this problem.