PrimeFaces actionListener not calling bean - jsf

Question

I am trying to mimic the PrimeFaces Dialog example. For some reason that I am not able to find, my PrimeFaces button does not seem to call the required managed bean method:
<h:form>
<p:commandButton value="Open" icon="ui-icon-extlink" actionListener="#{myController.createDialog()}" />
</h:form>
Managed bean:
#Named(value = "myController")
#ViewScoped
public class MyController implements Serializable {
public void createDialog() {
System.out.println("%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%");
...
The print statement is never executed, like if the Listener was not working. When I click the button, no response is given. No backend error, no JS error, nothing. I only see that some request is done because I log when a user passes the authorization layer. So something happens but seems to fail silently.
What I have tried:
Move the button to other places in the page
Use an id:
<p:commandButton id="ex" value="Open" icon="ui-icon-extlink" actionListener="#{myController.createDialog()}" />
<h:message for="ex" />
Remove the ViewScoped
Require a javax.faces.event.ActionEvent in the method
public void createDialog(ActionEvent event) {
System.out.println("%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%");
Change the method signature
action="#{myController.createDialog(5)}"
and
public void createDialog(int s) {
System.out.println("%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%");
I even tried to create a WEB-INF/faces-config.xml (which I would prefer not to, and according to PrimeFaces documentation I do not need it) with:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<faces-config version="2.2"
xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee
http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_2_2.xsd">
<application>
<action-listener>org.primefaces.application.DialogActionListener</action-listener>
<navigation-handler>org.primefaces.application.DialogNavigationHandler</navigation-handler>
<view-handler>org.primefaces.application.DialogViewHandler</view-handler>
</application>
<lifecycle>
<phase-listener>org.primefaces.component.lifecycle.LifecyclePhaseListener</phase-listener>
</lifecycle>
Other answers I have checked are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Apparently the use of actionListeners in PrimeFaces is not as correct as it should be... Is there another way to use PrimeFaces components?

Answer 1

This Dialog Framework code works for me:
index.xhtml
<p:commandButton id="openDialogButton" value="open dialog" action="#{myBean.openDialog('origin')}">
<!-- dialogReturn event: data could be passed, see page 587 in PF 6.1 manual. -->
<p:ajax event="dialogReturn" listener="#{myBean.doSthOnDialogReturn}"/>
</p:commandButton>
myDialogPage.xhtml
<p:commandButton id="closeButtonDialog" value="close dialog"
action="#{myBean.closeDialog('false')}"/>
<p:commandButton id="closeButtonDialog2" value="close dialog 2"
action="#{myBean.closeDialog('true')}"
ajax="false" validateClient="true"/>
Note: Example shows how to pass parameter from dialog. You can also notice, that the first button does just return while the second one does validation at first. I think these things can be useful.
myBean.java
public void openDialog(String origin) {
RequestContext.getCurrentInstance().openDialog("myDialogPage",
options, null);
}
public void closeDialog(Boolean param) {
RequestContext.getCurrentInstance().closeDialog(param);
}
public void doSthOnDialogReturn(SelectEvent event) {
if ((Boolean) event.getObject()) { // retrieve param value
doSth();
}
}
WEB-INF/faces-config.xml
<application>
<action-listener>
org.primefaces.application.DialogActionListener
</action-listener>
<navigation-handler>
org.primefaces.application.DialogNavigationHandler
</navigation-handler>
<view-handler>
org.primefaces.application.DialogViewHandler
</view-handler>
</application>

Answer 2

Finally I got to see some error:
SEVERE - /page.xhtml #159,146 actionListener="#{myController.createDialog()}": Target Unreachable, identifier 'myController' resolved to null
The trick to enable the display of error messages was to add the following in faces-config.xml:
<factory>
<exception-handler-factory>org.primefaces.application.exceptionhandler.PrimeExceptionHandlerFactory</exception-handler-factory>
</factory>
After checking this, I realised that my beans.xml file had been somehow deleted (??)