Passing a value from Visualforce Page to Controller

Question

How to pass a value from VF page to Apex Controller? I need to have a hidden field with pre-populated value inside VF page. Apex Controller must be able to read this value. How to do that?

EDIT:

By saying "a hidden field", I did not mean the actual field on the Salesforce object but instead just some kind of value holder which could be accessed and read from the Controller. That value will be hard-coded in the VF page.

Did you search the community before posting the question ? I think this question is already answered here (http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/questions/24666/how-to-pass-javascript-value-to-controller) and probably is going to be marked as duplicate. — Avidev9, May 21 '14 at 10:21

Alex Tennant · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-21T11:14:51.950

The easiest way I've found to do this is using window.setTimeout() with an abitrary low delay value which calls an apex:actionFunction that rerenders a dummy apex:outputPanel within an apex:actionRegion.

<script>
    window.setTimeout(function() { setParams("param1Value", "param2Value"); }, 1);
</script>

<apex:actionRegion>
    <apex:actionFunction action="{!setParams}" name="setParams" rerender="dummy">
        <apex:param name="param1" assignTo="{!param1}" value="" />
        <apex:param name="param2" assignTo="{!param2}" value="" />
    </apex:actionFunction>
    <apex:outputPanel id="dummy"/>
</apex:actionRegion>

The apex:actionRegion and the dummy apex:outputPanel prevent the whole page refreshing when the apex:actionFunction is called which will result in your JavaScript being called everytime and ending up in a refresh loop.

The apex:actionRegion also prevents the following error occurring when this is used on a page with an apex:inputFile component.

apex:inputFile can not be used in conjunction with an action component, apex:commandButton or apex:commandLink that specifies a rerender or oncomplete attribute

Your controller will looks something like this:

public class ParameterPageController
{
    public String param1 { get; set; }
    public String param2 { get; set; }

    public PageReference setParams()
    {
        return null;
    }
}

Edit:
You don't actually need the window.setTimeout() call at all and can simply call your apex:actionFunction directly, however you must put your call to your apex:actionFunction after (although not necessarily directly after) it's declaration for this to work.

<apex:actionRegion>
    <apex:actionFunction ... >
        ...
    </apex:actionFunction>
    ..
</apex:actionRegion>

 |
 |
 |

<script>
    setParams("param1Value", "param2Value");
</script>

Thanks, Alex, it's working. I will investigate why the page is refreshing without rerender="dummy". I noticed that it also works without window.setTimeout() by adding to the bottom of VF page. — justasd, May 21 '14 at 10:55
@justasd I've updated my answer with a bit more information on the purpose of the actionRegion and dummy panel. The page refresh is just a "feature" of using actionFunction and is related to Salesforce updating the view state and controller values from the param components. — Alex Tennant, May 21 '14 at 11:17

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 21 '14 at 10:16

If you are using custom controller then here is how you can do it.

<apex:page>
<apex:form>
    ...
    <apex:inputHidden value="{!co.CustomField__c}"/>
    ....
</apex:form>

And then write controler

public with sharing MyController {

  // Controller code sets this custom object reference
  // When the page is first displayed the CustomField__c value comes from here
  // When the form is submitted, the CustomField__c value is automatically updated
  public CustomObject__c co {get; set;}

  // An action initiated from the Visualforce
  public PageReference save() {
    if (co.Custom_field__c) {
        ....
    }
  }
}

Passing a value from Visualforce Page to Controller

2 Answers2