Coldfusion: specific action after selecting an option in select - forms

Question

I have following code:
<cfif session.language is ("DE")>
<cfset bl=ValueList(getContent.G,",")>
<cfelseif session.language is ("FR")>
<cfset bl=ValueList(getContent.H,",")>
<cfelseif session.language is ("EN")>
<cfset bl=ValueList(getContent.I,",")>
</cfif>
<cfset tags = sizes />
<cfset bltags = bl />
<cfset tagArray = arrayNew(1) />
<cfset tagArrayDATA = arrayNew(1) />
<cfloop list="#tags#" index="tag" delimiters=",">
<cfif not ArrayFindNoCase(tagArray,tag)>
<cfset arrayAppend(tagArray, tag) />
</cfif>
</cfloop>
<cfloop list="#bltags#" index="tag" delimiters=",">
<cfif not ArrayFindNoCase(tagArrayDATA,tag)>
<cfset arrayAppend(tagArrayDATA, tag) />
</cfif>
</cfloop>
<cfoutput>
<cfif isdefined("tagArray") AND arraylen(tagArray) GT 1>
<form name="frmsize" id="frmsize" action="/index.cfm?showusage" method="post">
<cfif isdefined("tagArray") AND arraylen(tagArray) GT 1>
<div>
<select name="valuesize">
<option value="">Choose your option</option>
<cfloop from="1" to="#arraylen(tagArray)#" index="i">
<option value="#tagArray[i]#">#tagArray[i]#
<cftry>
#tagArrayDATA[i]#
<cfcatch>
</cfcatch>
</cftry>
</option>
</cfloop>
</select>
</div>
</cfif>
</form>
</cfif>
</cfoutput>
My goal is to send a value from tagArrayDATA[i] via link.
It should look like that:
<form name="frmsize" id="frmsize" action="/index.cfm?showusage&valueArrayData="#tagArrayDATA[i]#" method="post">
I don't know how to manage that because the cfloop is below the action attribute of the form.

Answer 1

You can't really do what you are trying to do with server side code alone as far as I can tell. But you have a couple of options. One easy one is to just Javascript to update the action when the select is changed.
The other option is to put both values in the select and parse on the end.
<cfloop from="1" to="#arraylen(tagArray)#" index="i">
<option value="#tagArray[i]#-#tagArrayDATA[i]#">
#tagArray[i]# #tagArrayDATA[i]#
</option>
</cfloop>
Then when you are parsing the data just do:
<cfset data = listToArray(FORM.valuesize,'-') />
<!-- data[1] will be the selected value of #tagArray[i]# -->
<!-- data[2] will be the selected value of #tagArrayData[i]# -->
<!-- This assumes the - will never be actually in the data, you could use a different separator -->
My guess is they are both strings and this should work, though I have no idea why you have a try/catch in the select part of your code, probably look at a better way of doing that. If you really need that, I would clean it up as.
<cfloop from="1" to="#arraylen(tagArray)#" index="i">
<cfset data = '' />
<cftry>
<cfset data = tagArrayData[i] />
<cfcatch></cfcatch>
</cftry>
<option value="#tagArray[i]#-#data#">
#tagArray[i]# #data#
</option>
</cfloop>
Though if you are processing the data on the other end, I would make sure all the data is either in the FORM or the URL scopes but not mix. I would be pissed to have to parse some form data in the FORM scope and other data in the URL scope.