Using jQuery, how do I way attach a string array as a http parameter to a http request?

Question

I have a spring controller with a request mapping as follows

@RequestMapping("/downloadSelected")
public void downloadSelected(@RequestParam String[] ids) {
    // retrieve the file and write it to the http response outputstream
}

I have an html table of objects which for every row has a checkbox with the id of the object as the value. When they submit, I have a jQuery callback to serialize all ids. I want to stick those ids into an http request parameter called, "ids" so that I can grab them easily.

I figured I could do the following

var ids = $("#downloadall").serializeArray();

Then I would need to take each of the ids and add them to a request param called ids. But is there a "standard" way to do this? Like using jQuery?

Answer 1

I don't know about "standard way", but this is how I would do it.

var ids = $("#downloadall").serializeArray();

will give you a dataset on the form (only the checked items presented):

[{name:"foo1", value:"bar1"}, {name:"foo2", value:"bar2"}]

To feed this to jQuery's .ajax() just:

$.ajax({
  url: <your url>,
  data: ids.map(function (i) {return i.name+'='+i.value;}).join('&')
});

The Array.map() is not compatible with all browsers yet so you better have this code on your page too:

if (!Array.prototype.map) {
  Array.prototype.map = function(fun /*, thisp*/) {
    var len = this.length >>> 0;
    if (typeof fun != "function")
      throw new TypeError();

    var res = new Array(len);
    var thisp = arguments[1];
    for (var i = 0; i < len; i++) {
      if (i in this)
        res[i] = fun.call(thisp, this[i], i, this);
    }
    return res;
  };
}

This code snippet I got from mozilla developer center.

I didn't put them in a ?ids=... param, but this way they are easy to access on server side. You can always just modify the map function to fit your needs.