setting class and other attributes for spring form tag element

Question

I have the following page and it does not load

<form:form action="/test.htm"  method="post" commandName="demoForm" >

<div id="testSection" style="margin-top: 1.5%;margin-left: 3.5%;">

    <span class="test-container">
            <label>UserName</label>
            <span class="test-container-right">
                <form:input path="username" value="${UNAME}"  class="text simpleTextField" maxlength="200" style="width:60%" disabled/>
            </span>
    </span>

    <span style="width:auto; padding-left: 30%; padding-bottom: 4%; text-align:center; float:right; clear:both;">
        <input type="submit" class="btn" style="width:auto;" value="Save" />
    </span>     

</div>

</form:form>

but when I change it to

...
<span class="test-container-right">
        <form:input path="username" />
</span>
...

it works and loads correctly. Why am I not allowed to set html properties for form:input spring tag. How can I achieve this? On inspecting the element it expands to be

<input id="username" type="text" value="" name="username"></input>

I need to populate its value as well as provide it with a class and additional attributes like width.

Solution 1

Ok I resolved some part of it. Looks like tags used inside form:input tag are different than regular html tags. All of them are listed here. For ex style is cssStyle.

So I change my code to

<form:input path="username" cssClass="text simpleTextField" maxlength="200" cssStyle="width:60%" disabled="true"/>

and now it works..

I still don't know how to populate value in this input. These seems no equivalent of value keyword.

Solution 2

@Aniket You actually have an equivalent , consider in a case you have to populate the select box with the values from the model attribute . You can make use of items attribute.

For instance ,

     <tr>
      <td>City :</td>
      <td><form:select path="city" items="${cityList}" /></td>
     </tr>

It will generate the select with the the list of objects. cityList here refers the object that has been sent from the server side.

Hope this helps !

Comments

[Aniket Thakur]

Yes there are equivalent tags. Tx!