How can I get the posted form data in the backing component in the
processUpdates method?
#Override
public void processUpdates(FacesContext context) {
//get here rendered html code
}
Or can I get the posted form data in the decode method?
[Edit]:
My goal is to get the posted form data - Not to get the generated html code (Sry I wasn't precisely)
It is unclear what you want to achive, yet. I mean, at high level.
UIComponent.decode and processUpdates are medium-level lifecycle APIs which should be overriden when you want to extend the framework.
If you just need to use the framework, you need a managed bean, not a backing component.
Furthermore, generally only components that extend UIInput need to hook in those phases, because they are bound to a value="#{...}" value expression (which in turn refers to a managed bean, in most cases), and need to synchronize those values with the bound expression.
I suspect you are uselessly complicating your life: hooking into medium or low-level APIs is a real pain if you don't have an excellent understanding about how the framework operates.
Anyway, the standard request parameters decode into input component is this:
String clientId = this.getClientId(context);
Map<String, String> requestMap = context.getExternalContext().getRequestParameterMap();
String newValue = requestMap.get(clientId);
if (newValue != null)
{
this.setSubmittedValue(newValue);
}
Please, post the full xhtml facelet code (not the composite one, but the facelet using that composite), so I can understand where you want to go and I can try to point you to the right tool to use.
Related
I have created a custom component. I add a dynamic input text box to it (from the encode function).
The component is correctly is rendered as HTML.
But I want to bind the value of the text box to some property on the Managed Bean. So some other developer can use the component on his jsp with his managed bean.
I want to know, what should I do, so that the value entered in the text box (which my component dynamically creates) is set to the some Managed bean property.
You need to ensure that your custom component class extends UIInput and that you're in the encodeEnd() method of your renderer writing the component's client ID as name attribute of the HTML input element. Then you can in the overriden decode() method of your renderer just grab the submitted value from the request parameter map with the component's client ID as parameter name and set it as UIInput#setSubmittedValue() and let JSF do the remnant of the job of converting, validating and updating the model value.
#Override
public void decode(FacesContext context, UIComponent component) {
// Do if necessary first validation on disabled="true" or readonly="true", if any.
// Then just get the submitted value by client ID as name.
String clientId = component.getClientId(context);
String submittedValue = context.getExternalContext().getRequestParameterMap().get(clientId);
((UIInput) component).setSubmittedValue(submittedValue);
}
Unrelated to the concrete problem, are you aware of the new composite component support in JSP's successor Facelets? I have the impression that you don't necessarily need a custom component for this purpose. Or are you really restricted to using the legacy JSP as view technology in spite of that you're already on JSF 2.x? See also When to use <ui:include>, tag files, composite components and/or custom components?
Well, the problem is solved.
In the encodeEnd() method I added the element as
HtmlInputHidden hidden = new HtmlInputHidden();
hidden.setParent(this);
hidden.setId("someId");
ValueExpression ve = getValueExpression("value");
hidden.setValueExpression("value", ve);
hidden.encodeBegin(context);
hidden.encodeEnd(context);
This seems to have some problem.
Then I changed this to ...
HtmlInputHidden hidden = new HtmlInputHidden();
hidden.setId("someId");
ValueExpression ve = getValueExpression("value");
hidden.setValueExpression("value", ve);
this.getChildren().add(hidden);
hidden.encodeBegin(context);
hidden.encodeEnd(context);
The use of this.getChildren().add(); solved my problem
P.S. Obviously before adding the element, it needs to be checked if the element is already present.
Seems basic enough...
I have a custom JSF component and its associated renderer. The renderer does the decode and encodeEnd.
In decode i successfully retrie the submitted value via component.setSubmittedValue(ctx.getExternalContext().getRequestParameterMap().get(c.getClientId()));
In encodeEnd, i basically create the markup and if component.getValue() is not null, i insert its contents in the markup. So far so good.
Problem is that getValue() can be only be String. I have custom class that represents a compound data type and i want to use that as the component's local value. But doesn't work - JSF converts to String.
I also tried using component.getAttributes() - from the decode method, where i put my custom object in keyed to private static final String someKey = "asd". But later at encodeEnd there is no value/key in the map.
I want the users of this component to be able to specify in their backing bean the custom data type and not worry about serialization/deserialization to text representation between client/server. Presumably i have to use a converter for that? But how can i set up a default and immutable converter for the custom component?
The problem has a simple enough of a solution. Inside the Renderer class (or right into the Component class if using that directly):
#Override
public Object getConvertedValue(FacesContext context, UIComponent component, Object submittedValue) throws ConverterException {
SomeCustomObject thing;
//... do magic to create SomeCustomObject based on submittedValue
return thing;
}
Now whenever getValue() is called on that component, SomeCustomObject will be returned and you can safely cast to it. Also in the backing beans can use SomeCustomObject as the type.
Also note when calling component.getValue() in the actual Renderer, it will return SomeCustomObject as well, so if you're restoring state, you must convert back to its String representation.
For more details see and #Kukeltje's answer above and check how the same thing is done for primefaces calendar component here: https://github.com/primefaces/primefaces/blob/master/src/main/java/org/primefaces/component/calendar/BaseCalendarRenderer.java
For another more concise and clear illustration, check #BalusC's answer as well.
I'm working on a JSF webapp which purpose is to wrap a command-line program.
One of its main functionality is the ability to share a session between users (eg. for courses purpose), so that when an input is sent to an instance of the application, the output sent to every subscriber for this session.
As a result of this design, the webapp is mainly composed of a view-scoped bean which will request a controller of the command-line application.
It has also been chosen to identify a session with the URL fragment (eg. mydomain/myapp/#SESSIONID), so that anyone using the URL with the same fragment will share inputs and outputs, using its own instance of the view-scoped bean but sharing the same controller
In order to push results to all subscribers, I'm using Primefaces Push. Results are primarily text that has to be appened to the webapp's terminal, but some commands lead to the programmatic creation of a JSF component.
In order to handle this, I just render these components to a string that I send to all subscribers.
Then, I realized that in order to handle ajax requests from components (and from every subscriber), the associated UIComponent needs to be added to the UIViewRoot in the context of (don't know how to express this) each view-scope bean.
As a matter of fact, I first tried to bind a "common container" (a UIForm) to a property of the view scoped bean, in which I would put the programmatically created components, but I obviously had to face the chicken/egg issue #BalusC talks about in his blog, because the component was added again on each ajax request. Setting javax.faces.PARTIAL_STATE_SAVING to false didn't help either (I'm using MyFaces 2.2.5)
So, as somewhat of a workaround, when the controller needs to create a new component, it basically adds the id of the component to the data pushed (in a HashMap converted to Json), and all subscribers will trigger (back) a remoteCommand to its own instance of the view-scoped bean, in order to update the "common container" from its own UIViewRoot.
This does work, but I don't like this way of doing it!
So:
would it be possible to handle this kind of sharing between view-scope beans (with the same name) which are stored in different HTTP sessions? I'm refering to this answer from #BalusC... maybe playing with javax.faces.ViewState - would it even be possible?
Is there a "magical" scope for my currently-view-scoped bean I could use?
Shall I rather use a completely different design?
Thanks!
If you want share data between all your application users you can use application scope.
If you still want to use view scope, you can connect your view scope with another application scope like this:
ApplicationView appView = BeanUtil.findBean("applicationView", FacesContext.getCurrentInstance());
import javax.faces.context.FacesContext;
public class BeanUtil {
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
public static <T> T findBean(String beanName, FacesContext context) {
return (T) context.getApplication().evaluateExpressionGet(context,
"#{" + beanName + "}", Object.class);
}
}
With JSF, Managed Beans, & EL 2.2 I know generally that an expression of the form:
#{bean.value}
Will map to a corresponding set of functions in a managed bean class like so:
#ManagedBean
class Bean {
private String value;
public String getValue() { return value; }
public void setValue( String s ) { value = s; }
}
It is also possible to get and set properties of a map:
#{bean.value['key']}
Backed by something like:
#ManagedBean
class Bean {
private Map<String, Boolean> kvMap;
public boolean getValue( String key ) { return kvMap.get( key ); }
public void setValue( String key, boolean value ) { kvMap.put( key, value ); }
}
So far so good.
I'm finding as I spend more time with JSF however that I'm trying to write reusable chunks of code. Specifically, small blocks of xhtml in <ui:composition> blocks that I can include via <ui:include>. What's more, many of the more useful things for me are things like nested sets of checkboxes (our UI designer is just gaga over them ;-), and there <ui:repeat> becomes very handy.
Invariably, in order to use <ui:repeat> and <ui:include> without an ungodly amount of typing, I've been using aliases, either created via <ui:param> or inline with something like the var attribute of <ui:repeat>.
As I've been writing more and more nested UIComponents, particularly things that get their values from maps within maps, I'm finding it harder and harder to deduce the correct setter method signature that JSF will look for when submitting a form (for some reason writing getters seems to be more natural).
My question for you gurus then is:
Is there some way to get JSF to tell me what it expects a setter signature to look like? Since JSF generally doesn't complain about an expression that resolves to a getter-only (thinking it is a read-only property), I find the lack of feedback frustrating and it seems to require a lot of fiddling with different method signatures before I finally hit that magic right one.
I'm hoping there's some technique, say a FacesContext... query at runtime or looking in some compiled intermediate like a class file that would point me to the correct setter signature for a deeply nested property. If there is such a thing I think it would save me a lot of time trying to figure out how to get a setter constructed by trial and error.
Hopefully I've articulated clearly enough what I'm after, thanks in advance for your replies.
I understand that your question basically boils down to "How should a setter for a Map look like?".
The answer is simple: you don't need any one. EL uses the put() method on the Map itself. You only need to provide a getter for the whole Map. On getting map values, EL will use the get() method of the Map itself. This is all behind the scenes done by the builtin MapELResolver.
So this should do:
#ManagedBean
class Bean {
private Map<String, Boolean> kvMap;
public Map<String, Boolean> getValue() { return kvMap; }
}
which is to be used as #{bean.value['key']} or #{bean.value.key} if the key doesn't contain periods. You can just use it in input components as well.
<h:selectBooleanCheckbox value="#{bean.value.key}" />
As to the tooling, well, the JBoss Tools plugin for Eclipse has good EL autocomplete support for normal javabeans, but it can't autocomplete map keys. Further Eclipse has its own facilities to autogenerate bean properties along with getters and setters based on a list or existing properties.
I can't find any guidance on this question. I am writing a composite component that needs its own backing bean because it interacts with a data base.
The new component also needs to be able to set a value in some other backing bean as the result of some user action.
To do this, the question is do I have to write a #FacesComponent java class or a regular #Model/#Named (I use CDI annotations) type of bean? If you can use either, what is the advantage of one or the other?
Secondary question: will I be able to use CDI #Inject into a #FacesComponent to get my DAOs and such?
Update: I discovered that I can access cc.attr objects with the following code in a regular backing bean:
FacesContext fc = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
Object obj = fc.getApplication().evaluateExpressionGet(fc,
"#{cc.attrs.model.location}", Location.class);
So this allows me to obtain attributes. I haven't found out how I can write them yet.
So it seems that the only real reason to do a #FacesComponent is if you want to write rendering code that will output something the normal Facelets tags won't render. Is this correct?
I think BalusC responded to this basic question in this thread.
The main advantage is the ability of a #FacesComponent to access attributes that a UIComponent normally has access to, rather than trying to tie in with EL expressions executed in the bean.