How to call a method in Struts2 Action Class method with javascript

Question

We currently use the following javascript to submit the form when one of the field values change.

var url = "project/location/myAction.action?name="+ lname ; 
document.forms[0].action = url;
document.forms[0].submit();

which calls the following Struts2 action

<action name="myAction" class="project.location.NameAction">
    <result name="success" type="tiles">myAction</result>   
</action>

which then goes to the execute() method of the Action class NameAction where I have to check to see if the form was submitted from the javascript.

I would prefer to call the findName() method in NameAction directly from the javascript. In other words I want the javascript to act like the following jsp code.

<s:submit method="findName" key="button.clear" cssClass="submit" >

Answer 1

There are different ways to achieve what you want, but probably the simpler is to map different actions to different methods of the same action class file, eg. with annotations:

public class NameAction {

    @Action("myAction")
    public String execute(){ ... }

    @Action("myActionFindName")
    public String findName(){ ... }

}

or with XML:

<action name="myAction" class="project.location.NameAction">
    <result name="success" type="tiles">myAction</result>   
</action>

<action name="myActionFindName" class="project.location.NameAction" method="findName">
    <result name="success" type="tiles">myAction</result>   
</action>

Then in javascript:

var url = "project/location/myActionFindName.action?name="+ lname ;