Autocomplete a textbox using sj:autocompleter with a dynamic list

Question

I am intending to display a list of suggestions for a textbox using sj:autocompleter. When I hard code the data in the jsp it works fine.

<sj:autocompleter name="fruitNames" 
                  list="{'apple', 'banana', 'orange', 'apricot'}" 
                  label="Fruit Names">
</sj:autocompleter>

But I want to get the list of suggestions dynamically from the action class. I tried doing this but it is not getting the values.

<sj:autocompleter name="fruitNames" list="fruitslist"
     label="Fruit Names">
</sj:autocompleter>

In my action class,

public String execute() {
    fruitslist= new ArrayList<String>();
    fruitslist.add("Apple");
    fruitslist.add("Banana");
    fruitslist.add("Orange");
    fruitslist.add("Apricot");
}

Please help.

Answer 1

Ensure you have a getter:

    public List<String> getFruitslist() {
        return fruitslist;
    }

Since you posted your struts.xml and now it's clear that you want to use JSON, the code must be changed. The previous answer was referring to a standard Array from the main Action; in case of a JSON action, you need to specify an url in href attribute of the autocompleter to point to the separate JSON Action:

    <s:url var="remoteurl" action="ajaxAction"/>
    <sj:autocompleter
        id="fruitslist"
        href="%{remoteurl}"
        delay="50"
        loadMinimumCount="2"
    />

Then you need to set your result as JSON, and your root object to your Array, like this:

    <action name="ajaxAction" class="org.struts.action.AjaxJsonAction"> 
        <result name="success" type="json">
            <param name="root">
                fruitslist
            </param>
        </result> 
    </action>

I strongly suggest you to read how the Struts2-JSON plugin works.