concatenation of Strings in EL - jsf

Question

I want to display name (current user) in a drop down list in JSF. Here name is a dynamic variable that gets populated though some pojo class. The present code that I have is
<f:selectItem itemLabel="#{accessManager.salesManager.displayName} #{' ('.concat(i.m['current user']).concat(') ')}" itemValue="#{accessManager.salesManager.oid}" />
accessManager.salesManager.displayName populates the name on the UI.
#{' ('.concat(i.m['current user']).concat(') ')}" here I am trying to hard code (current user).
But this is throwing exceptions.
Can any one help me in this? It sounds to be a very simple query but I am not used to EL.

Answer 1

Based on your example, the easiest way is to provide an extra function in your managed bean which evaluates if the current user is the current choice or not. Later on, you evaluate that function with a ternary operator, which will decide wether to display the bundled (translated) value or not.
#ViewScoped
public class ChoiceBean{
public List<SalesManager> getSalesManagers(){
return salesManagers;
}
//Checks if your current choice is the current manager(EL 2.2 required to pass the parameter)
public boolean checkIfCurrent(SalesManager manager){
if (manager.getName().equals("Bob")) return true;
return false;
}
}
<f:selectItem
itemLabel="#{manager.name} #{choiceBean.checkIfCurrent(manager) ? i.m['current user'] : ''}" itemValue="#{salesManager.oid}" />
See also:
Passing parameter to JSF action
Ternary operator in JSTL/EL

Answer 2

Another solution is to use a function doing this String concatenation for you. Either
you use the JSTL functions library with fn:join (see enter link description here) or
implement your own static method in EL, and use that one. The method itself would (surprisingly) look like
public static String concat(String string1, String string2) {
return string1.concat(string2);
}
and the call in JSF, nested like #{fn:concat('(',fn:concat(i.m['current user'],')'))}.
But, out of curiosity, why don't you want to add the brackets into the properties file, so the ressource-value holds (current user) instead of current user?
Hope it helps...

Answer 3

So the question is how do I concat '(' & ')' before and after #{i.m['current user'])}
Don't do it the hard way. Just put those parentheses outside the EL expression.
<f:selectItem itemLabel="#{accessManager.salesManager.displayName} (#{i.m['current user']})" itemValue="#{accessManager.salesManager.oid}" />