jsf custom converter does not work with view scope - jsf

Question

Here is my code
Pojo
public class Deal implements Serializable {
private int id;
private String name;
private String description;
private Customer customer;
//getter setter omitted
}
public class Customer implements Serializable {
private int id;
private String name;
private String email;
private String phone;
//getter setter and equal hashcode omitted
}
Managed Bean
#ManagedBean(name="dealBean")
#ViewScoped
public class DealBean implements Serializable {
private List<Customer> customerList;
private List<Deal> dealList;
private Deal deal;
#PostConstruct
public void init() {
deal = new Deal();
dealList = new ArrayList<Deal>();
customerList = new ArrayList<Customer>();
customerList.add(new Customer(1, "MPRL", "mprl#mail.com", "1234455"));
customerList.add(new Customer(2, "Total", "total#mail.com", "3434323"));
customerList.add(new Customer(3, "Petronas", "petronas#mail.com", "8989876"));
}
//getter setter omitted
}
Customer Converter
#FacesConverter("customerConverter")
public class CustomerConverter implements Converter {
#Override
public Object getAsObject(FacesContext arg0, UIComponent arg1, String customerID) {
DealBean dealBean = (DealBean) FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getSessionMap().get("dealBean");
if (dealBean != null) {
List<Customer> customerList = dealBean.getCustomerList();
for (Customer customer : customerList) {
if (customerID.equals(String.valueOf(customer.getId()))) {
return customer;
}
}
}
return null;
}
#Override
public String getAsString(FacesContext arg0, UIComponent arg1, Object obj) {
if (obj != null) {
return String.valueOf(((Customer)obj).getId());
}
return null;
}
}
XHTML
Customer : <h:selectOneMenu id="customer" value="#{dealBean.deal.customer}">
<f:converter converterId="customerConverter" />
<f:selectItems value="#{dealBean.customerList}" var="cus"
itemLabel="#{cus.name}" itemValue="#{cus}" />
</h:selectOneMenu>
When the managed bean is in request or session scope, the Customer pojo is set correctly to Deal pojo. The problem is when the managed bean is in View scope, the Customer pojo is set to Deal pojo as NULL.
I am using JSF 2.2.0
Thanks much for the help in advance.

Answer 1

It's not the converter, is the view scoped the one broken:
Since you're using JSF tags, you cannot use #ViewScoped annotation, because it was removed from specification and recovered only for CDI usage. You could use omnifaces view scoped or the components of apache myFaces (I personally recommend omnifaces).
You can confirm this creating a
System.out.print("Creating");
in the constructor and checking how is called each Ajax request, so the bean is not recovered and since is marked as view and is a partial request, the values are not setted again (unless you send all the form, which is not a nice solution), other workaround could be making the bean request and recover all the data each request, making it Session (but will be alive for the session), or the #ConvesationScoped, in which you'll have to destroy and start the conversation manually.
Again, my first recommendation could be change to a Java ee server compliant and use the CDI annotations since JSF are being depreciated and not updated anymore