B4J Question Best way to Handle Posting multiple checkbox items in a web app

[miker2069]

I have a B4J web server app that will receive post data from a web page. The post data includes several checkboxes in which there may be multiple checkboxes checked. I want to submit all the selected checkboxes to my B4J handler class. Note I am submitting the form data using Jquery (and via AJAX as well).

So my HTML checkbox snippet looks like this:

<select id="opt" name="opt">
<option value="foo">Foo</option>
<option value="bar">Bar</option>
<option value="quux">Quux</option>
</select>


I submit post my form via AJAX using the following:

$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "/RegisterUser",
data: $("#form1").serialize(),
success: function(result)
{
alert(result);
},
error: function (xhr, ajaxOptions, thrownError) {
alert(thrownError);
}
});



In my handler that handles RegisterUser, I can get all the form data without a problem using:

dim email as string
email = req.GetParameter("checkemail")

That above obviously works great for regular input boxes.

I tried doing something like the following to get the checked items from the form:

Dim ck1() As String

ck1 = req.GetParameterValues("chk1")
Log("len:" & ck1.Length)


I used GetParameterValues since it seemed to be the best option to get an array of strings. That didn't work.

Something like:

dim chk1 as string

chk1 = req.GetParameter("ck1")

Only (and obviously) gets the first checked item and none of the others. Looking into this, it seems like this is a common issue with checkboxes. The Jquery form serialization doesn't really bundle up checkbox selections for you (which I would've thought it would). Seems like it's up to you (the dev) to serialize on your own and stick it in another hidden field or something to be submitted. Then I suppose I could explode it out in B4J as an array of strings.

I found this post which seems to show how to serialize the checkbox selections:

var array_values = [];
$('input[type=checkbox]').each(function() {
if ($(this).is(':checked')) {
array_values.push($(this).val());
}
});
// Now you can store your values in a comma separated list
var arrayValues = array_values.join(',');


My question is, is this basically the best way? I'm rather new to jquery (and finding it awesome) so I don't know all the ins and outs of it yet. Any feedback would be appreciated!

 

[Erel]

Why aren't you using a WebSocket handler? It will allow you to directly connect the server and the browser.

 

[miker2069]

Why aren't you using a WebSocket handler? It will allow you to directly connect the server and the browser.

Well this is for a sign up screen so didn't want web socket at this point in the work flow.

 

[sorex]

there is no need for that loop to check the enabled checkboxes.

when you use an oldskool form submit or jquery serialize it will create a checkbox array that only contains the selected values.

not sure how a B4J app will deal with it but it works fine with PHP.

 

[miker2069]

Well I am using a button, and processing the click event to do my jquery validation and submit. From my testing it only sends the first checked value despite having multiple items checked.

 

[sorex]

hard to tell without seeing the correct source.

I only see a select in post 1 which is a dropdown menu with only 1 selection possible unless you use multiple in the definition.

for you checkboxes you need to work with array definition like

<input type=checkbox name=options[] value=foo>Foo<br>
<input type=checkbox name=options[] value=bar>Bar<br>

then you can iterate through the items. (values should be the ID of the option instead of text in optimal situations)

but as I wrote this is how it works in PHP, I don't know how B4J threats this.