<p:selectOneMenu> with bold labels for some items - jsf

Question

I'm trying to have a Primefaces "SelectOneMenu" with items that can either have a "normal" label or a "bold" label. I tried 2 different variants, but both don't work as expected.
Variant 1:
<p:selectOneMenu id="menu" value="#{selected}">
<f:selectItems value="#{mySelectItems}"/>
</p:selectOneMenu>
public List<SelectItem> getMySelectItems() {
List<SelectItem> list = new ArrayList<SelectItem>();
for (...) {
SelectItem item = new SelectItem(value, label);
item.setEscape(false);
if (...)
item.setLabel("<b>" + item.getLabel() + "</b>");
list.add(item);
}
return list;
}
This way I can have some of the items in the menu with a bold label and some with a normal label. The problem: The field that is showing the current selection is displaying the text as "< b >...< /b >". The text doesn't seem to be escaped, but it seems that it just can't be displayed as bold, because it's inside an HTML label. I don't know how I could get rid of the "< b >" and "< /b >" in that label, though.
Variant 2:
<p:selectOneMenu id="menu" value="#{selected}" var="myClass">
<f:selectItems value="#{myClasses}"/>
<p:column>
<h:outputText value="#{myClass.name}" styleClass="bold"/>
</p:column>
</p:selectOneMenu>
public List<MyClass> getMyClasses() {
List<MyClass> list = new ArrayList<MyClass>();
...
return list;
}
With this variant I can also have bold labels for items (currently all of them) in the menu. The problem is: The text showing the current selection doesn't show "myClass.getName()", but instead "myClass.toString(). The labels in the menu are correct. Is there a way to fix this?
If I write...
<f:selectItems value="#{myClasses}" var="myVar" itemValue="#{myVar.value}" itemLabel="#{myVar.name}"/>
instead, then it doesn't display the items in the menu as bold anymore, but it's using getName() instead of toString() in the field of the current selection.
Does anyone know how to get my ideas to work the way I want them to work or maybe have a better idea on how to solve this?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

In Variant 2 you need to provide converter for MyClass by implementing javax.faces.convert.Converter. Converter needs only for selection (it generates string representation of the object (unique id of instance) and converts it back to object after processing). And for correct representation of selected value you need add this attributes to selectItems: <f:selectItems value="#{myClasses}" var="myVar" itemValue="#{myVar}" itemLabel="#{myVar.name}"/>.
<h:outputText styleClass="bold"... will effect only for list of selectItems. To change style of selected item you need to add styleClass to p:selectOneMenu. In your case:
<p:selectOneMenu id="menu" value="#{view.selection}" converter="#{view.myClassConverter}"
var="v" style="#{(view.selection.name eq 'bold-name') ? 'font-style: bold' : null}">
<f:selectItems value="#{view.myClasses}" var="mc"
itemLabel="#{mc.name}" itemValue="#{mc}"/>
<p:column>
<h:outputText value="#{v.name}" style="#{(v.name eq 'bold-name') ? 'font-style: bold' : null}"/>
</p:column>
<p:ajax event="change" update="menu" process="#this"/>
.