Convert a List to String to populate webpage in JSP

Question

I have DAO bean rows retrieved in a List. In my JSP I am accessing the List to iterate thru to populate my page. My JSP can't access the List because it says it must be a String when I execute a request.getParameter. How I convert this to String eventually populate my page?

public List getAccessRequest()
{
    List accessRequesttList = new ArrayList());  // parse List to string
    //AccessRequest accessrequest = null;
    AccessRequest accessRequest = new AccessRequest());

    try
    {
        System.out.println("Try statement begins AccessRequestDAO");
        PreparedStatement accrqststmt = super.getConnection().prepareStatement(AccRqstSqlStmt);

        ResultSet resultSet = accrqststmt.executeQuery();

        while (resultSet.next())
        {
            // Creating an instant of job follows
            accessRequest = new Accessrequest();

            accessRequest.setJOB_NAME(resultSet.getString("job_name"));
            accessRequest.setRequest_ts(resultSet.getTime("request_ts"));
            accessRequestList.add(accessRequest);
            Iterator iterator = accessRequestList.iterator();

            while (iterator.hasNext())
            {
                accessRequest = (Accessrequest) iterator.next();
            }
        }
        return (accessRequestList);

My JSP look like below:

        <%
            List jobList = request.getParameter("acccessrequests"); // parse List to String

            Iterator iterator = jobList.iterator();
            while (iterator.hasNext())
            {
                accessRequest = (AccessRequest) iterator.next());
        %>
                <tr>
                <td><input type="checkbox" name="<%accessRequest.getApproval_ind(); %>"></td>
                <td><input type="text" id="jobname' name="accessRequests" value="job_name"></td>

Answer 1

HttpServletRequest#getParameter() returns a String, not a List. So the compiler is right.

I am not sure how you have ever set the List as a request parameter, there's no such method like HttpServletRequest#setParameter(). So you're probably misinterpreting something. The normal approach is to set the list as request attribute by HttpServletRequest#setAttribute() and access it in JSP by EL (expression language) like as ${attributeName}. You also normally iterate over the list using JSTL <c:forEach> tag.

Assuming that you've set the list in the request scope using a Servlet like follows...

request.setAttribute("list", list);

...here's a kickoff example how to iterate over the list:

<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c" %>
...
<table>
    <c:forEach items="${list}" var="item">
        <tr>
            <td>${item.property1}</td>
            <td>${item.property2}</td>
            <td>${item.property3}</td>
        </tr>
    </c:forEach>
</table>