Multipart/form - Create a string from checkboxes and send to db

Question

I have a multipart/form-data form that contains a file upload section and other fields such as checkboxes. I would like to create a string based on the information from checkboxes, delimitered with ";" in order to send it to the database.

My UploadServlet looks like this:

try {
        // parses the request's content to extract file data
        List formItems = upload.parseRequest(request);
        Iterator iter = formItems.iterator();

        // iterates over form's fields
        while (iter.hasNext()) {

            FileItem item = (FileItem) iter.next();
            // processes only fields that are not form fields
            if (!item.isFormField()) {

                                    //doSomething 

                String fileName = new File(item.getName()).getName();
                String filePath = uploadPath + File.separator + fileName;
                File storeFile = new File(filePath);    

                // saves the file on disk
                item.write(storeFile);


            }
            else
            {

            // Process regular form field (input type="text|radio|checkbox|etc", select, etc).
                String fieldname = item.getFieldName();
                String fieldvalue = item.getString();
                // Do anotherThing


               // Can I create a string from the checkbox inputs here?

            }

Thanks!

Answer 1

You need to collect multiple fields with the same name yourself. Assuming that the input field name of those checkboxes is checkboxName, here's a kickoff example:

List<String> checkboxValues = new ArrayList<String>(); 

// ... while looping over all items.

String fieldname = item.getFieldName();
String fieldvalue = item.getString();

if ("checkboxName".equals(fieldname)) {
    checkboxValues.add(fieldvalue);
}

// ... after looping over all items.

StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();

for (String checkboxValue : checkboxValues) {
    if (builder.length() > 0) builder.append(";");
    builder.append(checkboxValue);
}

String semicolonSeparatedCheckboxValues = builder.toString();
// Save in DB. By the way, why not just using a separate table with a FK?
// Storing multiple values delimited in a single DB column is a bad practice.