I need to render an HTML table from a Servlet, in response to an AJAX request. I'm wondering what the best way to go about this is? I've explored using an javax.faces.component.html.HtmlDataTable. One of the questions I have regarding this method is how to render the HTML once the table has been populated. From the looks of it, a FacesContext is required.
Any ideas?
JSF isn't what you're looking for. It's a component based MVC framework. Just do it either the easy and ugly way in a simple loop in the servlet:
writer.write("<table>");
for (Item item : items) {
writer.write("<tr>");
writer.write(String.format("<td>%s</td>", item.getFoo()));
writer.write(String.format("<td>%s</td>", item.getBar()));
writer.write("</tr>");
}
writer.write("</table>");
Or store it as request attribute and forward to a JSP
request.setAttribute("items", items);
request.getRequestDispatcher("items.jsp").forward(request, response);
Which in turn basically contains the following:
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c" %>
<table>
<c:forEach items="${items}" var="item">
<tr>
<tr>${item.foo}</td>
<tr>${item.bar}</td>
</tr>
</c:forEach>
</table>
Or rather look for a different and more flexible data format like JSON so that the client has the freedom how to render it. Here's an example which uses Google Gson.
writer.write(new Gson().toJson(items));
Which you can render into a table using jQuery as follows:
$.getJSON('json/items', function(items) {
var table = $('#someelement').append('<table>');
$(items).each(function(i, item) {
var row = table.append('<tr>');
row.append('<td>').text(item.foo);
row.append('<td>').text(item.bar);
});
});