problem with flow transition

[alniks]

Hi, I am new to webflow and have the following problem. It seems that my flow doesn't recognize the eventId when I pass it through the form submit. Here are my configurations:

edit.jsp page:

 
        <form:form modelAttribute="item">
        
            <spring:bind path="callNo">
                <label>CallNo: <input type="text" name="${status.expression}" value="${status.value}"/></label>
            </spring:bind>

  <!-- other input fields -->

            <input type="submit" id="save" name="_eventId_save" value="Save"/>
            <input type="submit" id="cancel" name="_eventId_cancel" value="Cancel"/>
            <input type="submit" id="delete" name="_eventId_delete" value="Delete"/>
        </form:form>

edit-flow.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<flow xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow
                        http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow/spring-webflow-2.0.xsd">

    <persistence-context/>
    <input name="id" required="true" /> 
    <on-start>
      <evaluate expression="itemService.getItem(id)" result="flowScope.item" />
      <evaluate expression="statusService.listAllStatus()" result="flowScope.statuses" />
      <evaluate expression="typeService.getAllTypes()" result="flowScope.type" />
    </on-start>
    <view-state id="editItem" view="item/edit" model="item">
        <transition on="save" to="doSave"/>
        <transition on="cancel" to="doCancel"/>
    </view-state>
    <action-state id="delete">
        <evaluate expression="itemService.removeItem(item)"/>
        <transition to="externalRedirect:contextRelative:/moderate"/>
    </action-state>
    <action-state id="doSave">
        <evaluate expression="itemService.saveItem(item)"/>
        <transition to="view"/>
    </action-state>
    <end-state id="view" commit="true" view="externalRedirect:contextRelative:/item/view?id=${item.id}"/>
    <end-state id="doCancel" commit="false" view="externalRedirect:contextRelative:/item/view?id=${item.id}"/>
</flow>

dispatcher-servlet.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
       xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
       xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-2.5.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-2.5.xsd">
  
    <bean id="urlMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
        <property name="interceptors">
            <list>
                <ref bean="openSessionInViewInterceptor"/>
            </list>
        </property>
        <property name="mappings">
            <map>
                <entry key="/login/**" value-ref="loginHandler"/>
                <entry key="/accessdenied*" value-ref="accessDeniedHandler"/>
                <!-- other controller mappings --> 
                <entry key="/*" value-ref="defaultHandler"/>
            </map>
        </property>

        <property name="defaultHandler" ref="defaultHandler" />
        <property name="alwaysUseFullPath" value="true"/>
    </bean>

    <bean name="flowUrlMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
        <property name="order" value="2"/>
        <property name="mappings">
            <map>
                <entry key="/item/edit/**" value-ref="flowController"/>
            </map>
        </property>
    </bean>

   <!-- Bring in the WebFlow configuration    -->
   <import resource="classpath:priceanalysis-webflow.xml"/>

    <bean id="viewResolver"
          class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver"
          p:prefix="/WEB-INF/jsp/"
          p:suffix=".jsp"
          p:order="0"/>

    <bean id="exceptionResolver"
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleMappingExceptionResolver">
        <property name="exceptionMappings">
            <props>
                <prop key="java.lang.Exception">errors/error</prop>
            </props>
        </property>
        <property name="defaultErrorView" value="errors/error"/>
    </bean>

    <!--    controllers    -->

    <bean id="defaultHandler" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.ParameterizableViewController">
      <property name="viewName" value="index" />
    </bean>
<!-- other controllers -->

webflow configuration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:webflow="http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow-config"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow-config http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow-config/spring-webflow-config-2.0.xsd">

    <bean name="flowController" class="org.springframework.webflow.mvc.servlet.FlowController">
        <property name="flowExecutor" ref="flowExecutor"/>
    </bean>
    
    <bean name="hibernateFlowExecutionListener"
        class="org.springframework.webflow.persistence.HibernateFlowExecutionListener">
        <constructor-arg ref="sessionFactory" index="0"/>
        <constructor-arg ref="txManager" index="1"/>
    </bean>
   
    <webflow:flow-executor id="flowExecutor" flow-registry="flowRegistry"> 
        <webflow:flow-execution-listeners>
            <webflow:listener ref="hibernateFlowExecutionListener"/>
        </webflow:flow-execution-listeners>
    </webflow:flow-executor>

   <webflow:flow-registry id="flowRegistry" flow-builder-services="flowBuilderServices">
      <webflow:flow-location id="edit" path="/WEB-INF/jsp/item/edititem-flow.xml"/>
   </webflow:flow-registry>

    <bean id="flowBuilderServices" class="org.springframework.webflow.engine.builder.support.FlowBuilderServices">
        <property name="development" value="true"/>
        <property name="conversionService">
            <bean class="com.alniks.priceanalysis.mvc.webflow.PriceConversionService"/>
        </property>
        <property name="viewFactoryCreator">
             <bean class="org.springframework.webflow.mvc.builder.MvcViewFactoryCreator">
                 <property name="viewResolvers">
                    <list>
                        <ref bean="viewResolver" />
                    </list>
                </property>
             </bean>
        </property>
        <property name="expressionParser">
            <bean class="org.springframework.webflow.expression.el.WebFlowELExpressionParser">
                <constructor-arg >
                    <bean class="org.jboss.el.ExpressionFactoryImpl"/>
                </constructor-arg>
            </bean>
        </property>
    </bean>

</beans>

When I press the cancel or save button, the page simply reloads. However when I add _eventID=cancel to the url: item/edit?execution=e20s1&_eventID=cancel, all work as it should be - the transition goes to cancel view. Does anybody knows what causes this problem?

[alniks]

After studying request attributes I found what may be causing my problem. Here is how webflowViewActionStateHolder looks like:

[ViewActionStateHolder@1be32243 eventId = 'cancel', mappingResults = Mapping Results = [[Success@5cde6b02 code = 'success', error = false, originalValue = '728', mappedValue = '728'], [Success@e437ff0 code = 'success', error = false, originalValue = '73117', mappedValue = '73117'], [Success@71846ce0 code = 'success', error = false, originalValue = '282', mappedValue = '282'], [Success@2d082059 code = 'success', error = false, originalValue = '1562-8515', mappedValue = '1562-8515'], [TargetAccessError@7083ca27 code = 'typeMismatch', error = true, errorCause = org.springframework.binding.expression.ValueCoercionException: Value [] could not be coerced to type [com.alniks.priceanalysis.domain.pojo.Status], originalValue = '', mappedValue = [null]], [Success@5c4d0026 code = 'success', error = false, originalValue = '4', mappedValue = '4'], [TargetAccessError@4344ee21 code = 'typeMismatch', error = true, errorCause = org.springframework.binding.expression.ValueCoercionException: Value [] could not be coerced to type [com.alniks.priceanalysis.domain.pojo.Type], originalValue = '', mappedValue = [null]], [TargetAccessError@626ddb07 code = 'propertyNotFound', error = true, errorCause = org.springframework.binding.expression.PropertyNotFoundException: Property 'execution' not found on context of class [com.alniks.priceanalysis.domain.pojo.Item], originalValue = 'e1s1', mappedValue = [null]]]]

After removing the problem fields from my jsp form, the flow began to work fine. However I run into another problem of property conversion. I have implemented custon conversionService:

public class PriceConversionService extends DefaultConversionService {

    @Override
    protected void addDefaultConverters() {
        super.addDefaultConverters();
        addConverter(new TypeConverter());
        addConverter(new StatusConverter());
    }
}

The converters:

public class StatusConverter extends StringToObject {

    public StatusConverter() {
        super(Status.class);
    }
    @Override
    protected Object toObject(String string, Class targetClass) throws Exception {
        return new Status(string);
    }
    @Override
    protected String toString(Object object) throws Exception {
        Status status = (Status) object;
        return status.toString();
    }
}

public class TypeConverter extends StringToObject {

    public TypeConverter (){
        super(Type.class);
    }
    @Override
    protected Object toObject(String string, Class targetClass) throws Exception {
        return new Type(string);
    }
    @Override
    protected String toString(Object object) throws Exception {
        Type type = (Type) object;
        return type.toString();
    }
}

The converstion service does not seem to work. In debugging mode the converting methods are never hit.

[alniks]

Problem solved. The last step was to add

<binder>
            <binding property...

to flow config. Now it works.