Adding multiple objects with the same name fields using Thymeleaf/Spring Boot

Question

I'm working on trying to add two objects on a single form and running into issues with the field being concatenated when they have the same name. See below

Project Entity

@Entity
@SequenceGenerator(name = "project_project_id_seq", allocationSize = 1, initialValue = 1)
public class Project {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO, generator = "project_project_id_seq")
    private Long projectId;

    private String projectName;
    private String address;

Client Entity

@Entity
@SequenceGenerator(name = "company_seq", sequenceName = "client_company_id_seq", allocationSize = 1, initialValue = 1)
public class Client extends Company {


    public Client(String companyName, String address, String city, String state, String zipcode) {
        super(companyName, address, city, state, zipcode);
    }

    public Client() {
    }
}

Controller

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/projects")
public class ProjectController {

    @Autowired
    private ProjectService projectService;
    @Autowired
    private ClientService clientService;

    @GetMapping("/addNew")
    public String addNewProject(Model model) {

        model.addAttribute("project", new Project());
        model.addAttribute("client", new Client());
        return "addNewProject";
    }

    @PostMapping("/addNew")
    public String checkProjectInfo(@ModelAttribute Project project, @ModelAttribute Client client, Model model) {

        model.addAttribute("project", project);
        model.addAttribute("client", client);

        clientService.addNew(client);

        project.setClient(client);

        projectService.addNew(project);
        return "projectAdded";
    }
}

Relevant html portions (I didn't include the whole thing but can if needed)

(Project portion)
<form action="#" th:action="@{/projects/addNew}" method="post">
    <div class="row px-5">
        <div class="card mb-2 ">
            <div class="card-header py-3">
                <h5 class="mb-0 text-danger">Project details</h5>
            </div>
            <div class="card-body">
                <div class="row mb-2">
                    <div class="col-md">
                        <input type="text" th:value="${project.projectName}" name="projectName" id="projectNameForm" class="form-control" placeholder="Project Name" />
                    </div>
                </div>

                <!-- Text input -->
                <div class="row mb-2">
                    <div class="col-md-9">
                        <input type="text" th:name="address" th:value="${project.address}" id="projectAddressForm" class="form-control" placeholder="Address" />
                    </div>

(Client portion)
<div class="row mb-2">
                            <div class="col-md">
                                <input type="text" th:field="${client.companyName}" id="clientNameForm" class="form-control" placeholder="Client Name" />
                            </div>
                        </div>
                        <!--Client address -->
                        <div class="row mb-2">
                            <div class="col-md">
                                <input type="text" th:name="address" th:value="${client.address}" id="clientAddressForm" class="form-control" placeholder="Address" />
                            </div>
                        </div>

I've tried using th:object for each of them within the same div, tried using th:field instead of th:value. The problem is this keeps concatenating the address because they have the same name (the projectName/clientName fields work just fine as they're unique). I added the project. and client. after looking at another question here but that didn't change anything. I want to avoid making them all unique fields because I want to add other Company classes as well(Client extends Company). This also applies for other fields I want to use (city/state etc).

Is there something I can do to make sure the two different addresses are not concatenated? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

If you want to submit multiple objects, you should create a single page form object that contains all your objects and submit than, instead of trying to submit each object individually.

class ProjectForm {
  private Project project;
  private Client client;
  
  // getters and setters
}

Then your names will be unique (should be something like project.address etc...).

Alternatively, if your projects actually contains a client as in your code project.setClient(client);, you can just submit the project:

@GetMapping("/addNew")
public String addNewProject(Model model) {
    Project project;
    model.addAttribute("project", project = new Project());
    project.setClient(new Client());
    return "addNewProject";
}


<input type="text" th:value="${project.projectName}" name="projectName" id="projectNameForm" class="form-control" placeholder="Project Name" />
<input type="text" th:value="${project.client.address}" th:name="client.address"  id="clientAddressForm" class="form-control" placeholder="Address" />

Finally, just as a note, Thymeleaf has utility properties for this... the form should actually look like this:

<form action="#" th:action="@{/projects/addNew}" th:object="${project}" method="post">
  <input type="text" th:field="*{projectName}" id="projectNameForm" class="form-control" placeholder="Project Name" />
  <input type="text" th:field="*{client.address}" id="clientAddressForm" class="form-control" placeholder="Address" />