Pippo : Form processing

Reserved Form Field Names

The following field names are reserved for Pippo.

_method
_content
_content_type
_csrf_token

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Protection

Form Tricks

Pippo supports several convenient tricks for making HTML form submission more useful in a RESTful world.

Indexed Arrays

You may POST Arrays, Lists, or Sets to your RouteHandler implementations by using [n] suffixes for your parameter names in your forms.

<form>
    <input name="rainbow[0]" value="Red">
    <input name="rainbow[1]" value="Orange">
    <input name="rainbow[2]" value="Yellow">
    <input name="rainbow[3]" value="Green">
    <input name="rainbow[4]" value="Blue">
    <input name="rainbow[5]" value="Indigo">
    <input name="rainbow[6]" value="Violet">
</form>

In this example, Pippo will automatically collect the values into a parameter named rainbow. The rainbow parameter may be accessed and transformed to a collection of your choice.

POST("/rainbow", routeContext -> {
    List<String> rainbowList = routeContext.getParameter("rainbow").toList(String.class);
    Set<String> rainbowSet = routeContext.getParameter("rainbow").toSet(String.class);
    TreeSet<String> rainbowTreeSet = routeContext.getParameter("rainbow").toCollection(TreeSet.class, String.class);
}

Or if you are using Pippo controllers…

public void postRainbow(@Param("rainbow") TreeSet<String> rainbow) {
  // do something with the rainbow
}

Browser-based PUT, PATCH, DELETE, etc

Pippo supports overriding the POST method used to submit a form through the use of a hidden form field named _method.

<form>
    <input name="rainbow[3]" value="Gray">
    <input type="hidden" name="_method" value="PATCH">
</form>

Pippo will intercept the _method parameter specification and route the request to the PATCH handler that matches the URL pattern.

PATCH("/rainbow", routeContext -> {
    List<String> patched = routeContext.getParameter("rainbow").toList(String.class);
    List<String> rainbow = dao.getRainbow();
    for (int i = 0; i < patched.size(); i++) {
        if (patched.get(i) != null) {
            rainbow.set(i, patched.get(i));
        }
    }
    dao.updateRainbow(rainbow);
}

This allows you to develop a more RESTful design when handling form submissions.

Browser-based submission of JSON or another format

Pippo supports POSTing non-form content by specifying _content_type and _content hidden form fields. When used in combination with the _method hidden form field you can exercise a RESTful api.

<form>
    <input type="hidden" name="_content" value="['Red', 'Orange', 'Yellow', 'Green', 'Blue', 'Indigo', 'Violet']">
    <input type="hidden" name="_content_type" value="application/json">
    <input type="hidden" name="_method" value="PUT">
</form>

PUT("/rainbow", routeContext -> {
    List<String> rainbow = routeContext.createEntityFromBody(List.class);
});

Pippo Micro Java Web Framework

Form processing