Managed Beans and TabContainer - xpages

Question

I ask this squestion on behalf of one of my developers. Haven't looked into details myself.
Assume you have a simple managed bean (=contact) This bean has a method to get the contacts firstName.
I can open an xpage and bind the bean to a computedText Field #{contact.firstName}
In our application we use a tabContainer to have multiple documents of the same type ( contact ) open.
How do I have to use my bean in the container?
faces-config.xml:
<managed-bean>
<managed-bean-name>person</managed-bean-name>
<managed-bean-class>com.package.Person</managed-bean-class>
<managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
</managed-bean>
Java Bean Class:
public class Person implements Serializable {
private String strDocumentID;
private Document docData;
private String strFirstName;
private String strLastName;
private static final long serialVersionUID = 2934723410254681213L;
public Person() {
//setting the DocumentUniqueID of the current in a tab opened document
//attention: there could be more than one open tab, all with different documents
//and even different document types; and it is possible to switch back and forth between tabs
//DocumentId = ???;
//Setting the values from the stored document to the object
//setValues();
}
private void setValues() {
try {
Session session=NotesContext.getCurrent().getCurrentSession();
Database currdb=session.getCurrentDatabase();
docData=currdb.getDocumentByUNID(DocumentId);
setStrFirstName(docData.getItemValueString("FirstName"));
setStrLastName(docData.getItemValueString("LastName"));
} catch (NotesException e) {
throw new FacesException("Could not open document for documentId "+ DocumentId, e);
}
}
public Document getDataDocument() {
return docData;
}
public void setDataDocument(Document docData) {
this.docData = docData;
}
public String getDocumentId() {
return DocumentId;
}
public void setDocumentId(String documentId) {
DocumentId = documentId;
}
public String getStrFirstName() {
return strFirstName;
}
public void setStrFirstName(String strFirstName) {
this.strFirstName = strFirstName;
}
public String getStrLastName() {
return strLastName;
}
public void setStrLastName(String strLastName) {
this.strLastName = strLastName;
}
}
Custom Control with computed field:
person.strFirstName
So, the problem is the constructor of the Person Class. It needs to get the "link" to the opened document when the document is opened in a tab and everytime when switched back to this tab. And this without the use of any Data source, because this is what should be done by the managed bean itself.
So, hope that helped to get a little bit more understanding of the problem.
If not, please ask again.

Answer 1

My advice:
make another meta bean implementing map interface. Alter its getter to instantiate and return your data bean. Binding may be then:
meta[someparamwithunid].field
And save would be:
meta[someparamwithunid].setValues()
Like this:
public class People implments java.util.Map {
Map<String,Person> people = new HashMap<String,Person>();
public Person get(String unid) {
if people.keySet().contains(unid) {
return people.get(unid)
} else {
// make instance and store it in people map, return it
}
// implement other methods
}
With view scope I think there is no problem with concurrency.

Answer 2

Frantisek points into the right direction. Your request bean would not be a person bean, but a people bean. You then can use an expression like
#{people[index].name}
to refer to a specific person. People would be the managed bean and the index could either be the UNID or the tab number. I find the later one easier to implement. you need to have a loadPerson(index) = UNID function to load an existing person. More information on the use of Expression language can be found here:
Sun Oracle JSF documentation or in some Course materials.
Hope that helps.

Answer 3

I'm not sure if this bean will work in the requestScope because you have probably a lot of partial refreshes with the tabcontainer (maybe try change it to a higher level scope).