Path attribute in form:select - spring 2.5 JSP - spring

Question

I've been put on the task of learning spring (2.5), and I've got into a problem using the attribute where, when the form is loaded, I wont get any pre-selected values. So the situation is as follows:
In my system I have Companies, Customers and Users. Customer extends Company, and a Company can have a List of Users (the getMethod is public so hence Customer also have a List of Users).
So this is how the form select looks in my .JSP:
<form:select multiple="true" id="selectAccountManager" path="${customer.users}" cssClass="input select_img" >
<c:forEach items="${customerUsers}" var="user" >
<form:option value="${user.id}
<c:out value="${user.displayName}" />
</form:option
</c:forEach>
</form:select>
Right now, I get an error on the path="${customer.users}". If I use path="users" my system works, but then I wont get any of the values within the form as "pre-selected" when the page loads. I've tried with path="customer.users" but when I do this I get a referenceError in js-console.
The .JSP is mapped to an EditCustomerController where customerUsers is put into a map by
map.put("customerUsers", UserControlHelper.getAllUsers());
So I guess this is where the problem lies as I always get all users from the system?
TL;DR: How do I set selected values on a form where I load the items from one class, and want the select-filter to come from another?

Answer 1

(First of all, Spring 2.5 is old and I suggest you to use 3.2.x or even 4.0.x)
To pre-select option you should set appropriate field on the model and Spring will pre-select it automagically. Like that:
<form:form method="post" modelAttribute="myForm">
<form:select multiple="true" path="users">
<form:options items="${customerUsers}" itemLabel="displayName" itemValue="id" />
</form:select>
</form:form>
And in the controller:
User defaultUser = new User(1, "DEFAULT");
MyForm myForm = new myForm();
myForm.getUsers().add(defaultUser);
model.addAttribute("myForm", myForm);

Answer 2

So I found out what the problem was.
When I created my map I only put the users in there. What the User-object actually was mapped upon was the id of the user (something I retrieved through ${user.id} as can be seen in the originalpost. What I had to do was to create the path in a correct way as such:
Controller - java:
Map<Int,String> users = new HashMap<Int,String>();
for(User user: UserControlHelper.getAllUsers()){
users.add(user.getId(), user.getDisplayName())
}
model.put("customerUsers", users);
and my jsp:
<form:select path="users" items="${customerUsers}"></form:select>