Use an Ajax response in JSP

Question

I have a JSP page which has nothing but a normal HTML table with five rows and five columns.

Now I am making an Ajax call and get a response back. Now once I have the response back, I need the data to be filled in appropriate cells of the table.

So my question is;

1. Should I use JSON for building the response?
2. How do I handle the data back at the JSP level. That is, once I have the response from the server?

Just as additional information, I am using DWR which is nothing but calling a Java method (which builds the response) from inside JavaScript code.

Answer 1

Let's consider this Java class.

    class Employee
    {
        int id;
        String eName;
        // Setters and getters
    }

In JavaScript, the JSON object:

 var employee = {
     id   : null,
     name : null
 };

This is the call to a Java method from a JavaScript function:

   EmployeeUtil.getRow(employee,dwrData);

In getRow() of the EmployeeUtil class, the return type of method will be Employee:

   Employee getRow();

So using the setters of Employee set the data. dwrData is the callback function.

function dwrData(data) {
    employee=data;
}

The data returned, which is an Employee bean, will be in the callback function.

Just initialize this in the JavaScript JSON object.

Use a JSON object accordingly to populate the table.

EDIT :

You can use List getRow() instead of Employee getRow(), returning a list of rows as a List instead of a Bean.

Now the response contains list as data.

Refer to Populate rows using DWR.

Check these examples to populate data in table:

• DWR + Dojo Demo
• Dynamically Editing a Table

Should I use JSON for building the response?

• No need to pass JSON in response. Instead return a Bean of a class as mentioned above.

• A list can be passed as a response, also as mentioned above.

How do I handle the data back at the JSP level. That is, once I have the response from the server.

Check the explanation above and the examples of the given links to handle the response in JSP and display the response data in a table.

• DWR basics on YouTube