How do I retrieve the values of checkboxes when the Id values are dynamically generated

Question

I am dynamically naming a set of checkboxes based on certain files names (user is selecting file to include for some processing).

Is there a way I can retrieve the files names or do I need to save them to a session object of some sort and then use the retrieved values (from the session object) to retrieve the values of the checkboxes.

In short what I really want is to know which checkboxes have been clicked and which file names they correspond to, any solution will be fine.

Answer 1

Use unique id, but same name. Then you will be able to use either getParameterValues(name), or getParameterMap() of ServletRequest. Remember, you will only get what is selected.

Answer 2

Are you doing all this server side or using java-script client side?

If it's all server side, why not prepend checkbox on the name when you dynamically name them:

<input type="checkbox" name="checkbox_someRandomeName" value="something" />

You can then loop the posted variables and see if the name starts with "checkbox":

ParameterMap paramMap = request.getParameterMap();
// Loop through the list of parameters.
Iterator y = paramMap.keySet().iterator();
while (y.hasNext()) {
  String name = (String) y.next();  
  if name.startswith("checkbox"){
    // do something
  }
}

Answer 3

What does your HTML look like? I'd expect checkboxes like:

<li><input id='0001' type='checkbox' name="files[]" value="file1"/>/xyz/file1</li>
<li><input id='0002' type='checkbox' name="files[]" value="file2"/>/xyz/file2</li>
<li><input id='0003' type='checkbox' name="files[]" value="file3"/>/xyz/file3</li>
<li><input id='0004' type='checkbox' name="files[]" value="file4"/>/xyz/file4</li>

The name will be associated with any values checked on submit. Here, I used files[] because that's required by PHP, I haven't done this in servlets.