how to set focus for elements in a spring based application - forms

Question

I have a spring application where i validate all validations in custom spring validator class.
My form has nearly 15 fields.If there is a error in the last field , how to set the focus to that element.
Does spring tags support that. Any technical ideas ? Currently i display my error messages near the fields itself.

Answer 1

It is possible to use spring:bind tag to determine whether a field or the whole model object has error and the overall status of the object after processing (submission).
<spring:bind path="user.username">
<input id="inputId" type="text" name="${status.expression}" value="${status.value}"/>
<c:if test="${status.error}">
<c:forEach items="${status.errorMessages}" var"error">
<span class="field-error">${error}</span>
</c:forEach>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.getElementById('inputId').focus();
</script>
</c:if>
</spring:bind>
Note:
The status variable is exposed by the spring:bind tag.
The javascript part will focus the element when the specific field
has validation errors.

Answer 2

You can set autofocus to all fields that have an error, but your browser will only autofocus (and scroll) to the first one.
<spring:bind path="someFieldName">
<input type="text" name="someFieldName" value="${status.value}" ${status.error?'autofocus="autofocus"':''} />
</spring:bind>
You can't use spring's <form:input /> here as it doesn't work with conditional attributes.

Answer 3

I've used this:
<spring:bind path="*">
<c:if test="${status.error}">
<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload = function(){
document.getElementById('${status.errors.fieldErrors[0].field}').focus();
};
</script>
</c:if>
</spring:bind>
If there is an error it will find the first fieldError and its id and set the focus on that element
forgot to say that the beauty is that you don't need to put this code next to every input. One time is enough per jsp