Creating form elements at runtime in JSP

Question

Hi I am creating an application where for each user form elements being displayed could be different (type of element, number of element, label of the form element, order of appearance : all these could differ from user to user).

I am fetching these user prefernece from DB.

I was hoping to implement some technique/tool/method so that I could create the JSP to be shown to the user at runtime from centralized framework (I want to reuse the same component for creating JSP for the users).

I am thinking some XML transformation using XSLT, but not sure how to do it or whether that is the best approach.

Any suggestions?

PS : I am using Struts + Spring Framework.

Interesting. I would go with jquery for creating dynamic elements — Anupam, Oct 23 '12 at 07:26
Could you direct me to a example? Would it be possible to create prepopulated fields, dropdowns? — Rachit Agrawal, Oct 23 '12 at 07:48
What I meant was, if you are planning to do it on client side then you could use jquery to create dynamic elements [like this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/268490/jquery-document-createelement-equivalent). — Anupam, Oct 23 '12 at 07:51
I want to do it on server side. That way prepopulating the fields and managing the whole setup would be efficient. — Rachit Agrawal, Oct 23 '12 at 08:01
I think XML/XSLT is NOT the way to go (having had to maintain such beasts in the past - anyone remember Cocoon?). I would start "simple" and simply code in JSP with regular logic. If you are getting really fancy (different ordering and placement of fields, etc), then I would look at a client-side approach as others have suggested. There are quite a few frameworks/tools to do this with. — nickdos, Oct 23 '12 at 08:25
well u can simply put ur
tag inside a jsp conditions like if else it would work perfectly — Hussain Akhtar Wahid 'Ghouri', Oct 23 '12 at 09:52

Aleksandr M · Answer 1 · 2012-10-23T09:15:15.843

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If you want do this on server side then maybe you can do something with Apache Tiles http://tiles.apache.org/. There is a runtime composition API as well http://tiles.apache.org/2.2/framework/tutorial/advanced/runtime.html.

edited Oct 23 '12 at 09:15

answered Oct 23 '12 at 08:51

Aleksandr M

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I want to have different set of form element for each user. If go for tiles I ll have to create a tile per user. That wouldnt be very useful. – Rachit Agrawal Oct 23 '12 at 08:56
You could create tile per `some reusable component`. – Aleksandr M Oct 23 '12 at 08:59
Thanks...But i m still skeptical..Do you have implemented examples for the same?? – Rachit Agrawal Oct 23 '12 at 09:07
Take a look at tiles tutorials there are examples how to fetch tiles definitions from database and how to manipulate tiles at runtime. – Aleksandr M Oct 23 '12 at 09:17

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 30 '12 at 09:20

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After enough R&D i have come up with the following approach. Get the user preferences in Java object(in list/map format). This object should contain the label name, order, input type, default value etc. Then transform this Java object to a JSON object( using any lib like GSON, Jackson etc).

Next parse this JSON object in javascript using javascript/jquery and then parse the thus formed JSON object to create the form fields(by iterating ovet the JSON object)

answered Oct 30 '12 at 09:20

Rachit Agrawal

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is there any performance issue, if you create dynamic html using json in clientside? which approach is better, creating dynamic page from client side or server side? – Manu Benjamin Oct 11 '15 at 06:16

Creating form elements at runtime in JSP

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