Nested forms - what a Wicked(t) idea!

Have you ever got into the situation where you feel like you need to stretch the limits of HTTP form processing? Sometimes when developing complex web applications you end up with a form that has just too many features on it. This situation is particularly common when the application uses Ajax forms, as these forms often end up accumulating an enormous amount of funcionality - different actions for different buttons, events related to list choices or check box changes, partial screen updates etc. One of the applications I'm currently working on has the requirement that the be able to upload files as part of bigger system interactions. The upload can happen in a couple of different screens and since I'm using Wicket, it feels natural to create a file upload component that can be reused accross all the screens. My first approach was to use to separate HTTP forms: one for the use case interaction and one for the file upload interaction: (...main form fields) ... While this idea works , it has a big  drawback: what if the user fills in the main form, chooses a file in the upload field (in the upload form) and hits the mainSubmit button? The uploadForm will not be submited and the upload will not happen, but the main form will. This behaviour would be quite confusing for the end user who would expect the file selected to be uploaded as part of the submit. I could try to force the user t...

Date: March, 30 2010
Url: http://www.java.net/blog/jjviana/archive/2010/03/30/nested-forms-what-wickedt-idea

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