Set focus to specific JSF inputText on page load - jsf

I want to set focus on inputText field in JSF on page load. How can I implement this?

If you're already at HTML5 and JSF 2.2, use HTML5 autofocus attribute. In JSF 2.2 you can set it as a passthrough attribute.
<html ... xmlns:a="http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/passthrough">
...
<h:inputText ... a:autofocus="true" />
You can even conditionally set it, you only need to make sure that the false condition evaluates to null, otherwise the attribute will still be rendered. It's a HTML boolean attribute, so only its presence is already the trigger regardless of its value. When the value is explicitly set to null, then JSF won't render the attribute in its entirety.
<h:inputText ... a:autofocus="#{component.valid ? null : true}" />
An alternative would be to throw in some JavaScript. Every input element has a focus() function. The below naive Vanilla JS approach focuses the first element of the first form.
window.onload = function() {
document.forms[0].elements[0].focus();
}
If you want to focus a specific input element during window load, then do:
window.onload = function() {
document.getElementById('formId:inputId').focus();
}
If you happen to have jQuery at hands, more fine grained checks could be done.
$(document).ready(function() {
$(":input:visible:enabled:first").focus()
});
In case you intend to execute it only after a postback, head to below related Q&A:
Set focus to inputText on validation error
Calling a JavaScript function from managed bean
Utility/component libraries may have builtin autofocus facilities. OmniFaces has a <o:highlight> which highlights all invalid inputs on postback and autofocuses the first one. PrimeFaces by default autofocuses the "last active" element on complete of an ajax request and has a <p:focus> for more fine grained control. See also below related Q&A:
OmniFaces highlight does not set focus with <p:ajax>

If you use primefaces, you can focus your input like this:
<p:focus for="inputId"/>

Related

primefaces update attribute not working on modal dialog opened from modal dialog [duplicate]

I have a question about the idea behind the fact, that only UIForm got the attribute prependId. Why is the attribute not specified in the NamingContainer interface? You will now probably say that's because of backward compability but I would preferre breaking the compability and let users which implement that interface, also implement methods for the prependId thing.
The main problem from my perspective about the prependId in the UIForm component is, that it will break findComponent()
I would expect that if I use prependId, then the NamingContainer behaviour would change, not only related to rendering but also when wanting to search for components in the component tree.
Here a simple example:
<h:form id="test" prependId="false">
<h:panelGroup id="group"/>
</h:form>
Now when i want to get the panelGroup component I would expect to pass the string "group" to the method findComponent(), but it won't find anything, I have to use "test:group" instead.
The concrete problem with that is, when using ajax with prependId="false". The ajax tag expects in the attributes update and process, that the values care of naming containers. It's a bit strange that when I use prependId="false" that I have to specify the full id or path, but okay.
<h:form id="test" prependId="false">
<h:panelGroup id="group"/>
</h:form>
<h:form id="test1" prependId="false">
<h:commandButton value="go">
<f:ajax render="test:group"/>
</h:commandButton>
</h:form>
Well this code will render without problems but it won't update the panelGroup because it cannot find it. The PartialViewContext will contain only the id "group" as element of the renderIds. I don't know if this is expected, probably it is but I don't know the code. Now we come to the point where the method findComponent() can not find the component because the expression passed as parameter is "group" where the method would expect "test:group" to find the component.
One solution is to write your own findComponent() which is the way I chose to deal with this problem. In this method i handle a component which is a NamingContainer and has the property prependId set to false like a normal UIComponent. I will have to do that for every UIComponent which offers a prependId attribute and that is bad. Reflection will help to get around the static definition of types but it's still not a really clean solution.
The other way would be introducing the prependId attribute in the NamingContainer interface and change the behaviour of findComponent() to work like described above.
The last proposed solution would be changing the behaviour of the ajax tag to pass the whole id, but this would only solve the ajax issue and not the programmatic issues behind the findComponent() implementation.
What do you think about that and why the hell is it implemented like that? I can't be the first having this problem, but I wasn't able to find related topics?!
Indeed, UIComponent#findComponent() as done by <f:ajax render> fails when using <h:form prependId="false">. This problem is known and is a "Won't fix": JSF spec issue 573.
In my humble opinion, they should never have added the prependId attribute to the UIForm during the JSF 1.2 ages. It was merely done to keep j_security_check users happy who would like to use a JSF form with JSF input components for that (j_security_check requires exact input field names j_username and j_password which couldn't be modified by configuration). But they didn't exactly realize that during JSF 1.2 another improvement was introduced which enables you to just keep using <form> for that instead of sticking to <h:form>. And then CSS/jQuery purists start abusing prependId="false" to avoid escaping the separator character : in their poorly chosen CSS selectors.
Just don't use prependId="false", ever.
For j_security_check, just use <form> or the new Servlet 3.0 HttpServletRequest#login(). See also Performing user authentication in Java EE / JSF using j_security_check.
For CSS selectors, in case you absolutely need an ID selector (and thus not a more reusable class selector), simply wrap the component of interest in a plain HTML <div> or <span>.
See also:
How to select JSF components using jQuery?
How to use JSF generated HTML element ID with colon ":" in CSS selectors?
By default, JSF generates unusable ids, which are incompatible with css part of web standards

commandlink in JSF not generating the intended HTML tag

I'm trying to call a managed bean from h:commandLink in JSF. But I don't see href attribute in the rendered HTML a tag.
Am I missing something?
There is a ManagedBean called AccountSetupController with a signUp method in it.
This is the tag I used in JSF:
<h:form prependId="false">
<h:commandLink action="#{accountSetupController.signUp()}"
value="#{msg['homepage.createaccount']}" styleClass="button large">
</h:commandLink>
</h:form>
This is the rendered tag. See there is nothing in href attribute.
<a href="#" onclick="mojarra.jsfcljs(document.getElementById('j_idt15'),
{'j_idt33':'j_idt33'},'');return false"
class="button large">CREATE MY ACCOUNT</a>
This is the form tag that is generated
<form id="j_idt15" name="j_idt15"
method="post" action="/myproject/faces/homepage/homepage.xhtml"
enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded"> .... </form>
As you can see, the form action is pointing to some place I don't need.
Am I missing something?
Command links in JSF are rendered that way. The form will be submitted by JSF via JavaScript's onclick method using JSF JS library, while the href will always stay #.
Moreover, you won't find the bound action / action listener method names in browser tools due to understandable reasons. Rather, JSF will find the id of a clicked link on the server and will trigger all of the component's action(listeners).
All in all, reading <h:commandLink> documentation unsurprisingly helps a lot (all emphasis mine):
General behavior: Both the encode and decode behavior require the ability to get the id/name for a hidden field, which may be rendered in markup or which may be programmatically added via client DOM manipulation, whose value is set by the JavaScript form submit (further referred to as hiddenFieldName.
Decode behavior: Obtain the "clientId" property of the component. Obtain the Map from the "requestParameterMap" property of the ExternalContext. Derive hiddenFieldName as above. Get the entry in the Map under the key that is the hiddenFieldName. If the there is no entry, or the entry is the empty String, or the entry is not equal to the value of the "clientId" property, return immediately. If there is an entry, and its value is equal to the value of the "clientId" property, create a new javax.faces.event.ActionEvent instance around the component and call queueActionEvent() on the component, passing the event.
Encode behavior: Render "#" as the value of the "href" attribute. Render the current value of the component as the link text if it is specified. Render JavaScript that is functionally equivalent to the following as the value of the "onclick" attribute: document.forms['CLIENT_ID']['hiddenFieldName'].value='CLIENT_ID'; ocument.forms['CLIENT_ID']['PARAM1_NAME'].value='PARAM1_VALUE'; document.forms['CLIENT_ID']['PARAM2_NAME'].value='PARAM2_VALUE'; return false; document.forms['CLIENT_ID'].submit()" where hiddenFieldName is as described above, CLIENT_ID is the clientId of the UICommand component, PARAM*_NAME and PARAM*_VALUE are the names and values, respectively, of any nested UIParameter children.

Render a jsf element on mouseover

I have a <h:panelGrid> and a h:commandLink(link is basically a image).Now I want that on mouseover event , Then link should be render(render='true') and on mouseout event, it gets removed render='false'.But I am unable to create the logic that How can I do this with these events as the approach I am using is To set the values of bean true and false on this event.
Here is my code
<h:form>
<h:panelGrid mouseover='** we cannot call a bean method here which changes the bean value **'>
This is the Div On which I want to apply mouseover event
</h:panelGrid>
<h:commandLink id="btn" render={renderBean.renderLink}>
<h:graphicImage url="image.jpg"/>
</h:commandLink>
</h:form>
The default value of renderLink attribute of renderBean is false. Now I want to know the way that How can I change its value to true on mouseover event? Is it possible? OR Anyother solution in JSF w.r.t this requirement
You have to remember in JSF that the page will first be processed server-side by the JSF engine in the web server. At that time all JSF tags will be converted into their HTML equivalent. The render attribute tells the server-side engine whether or not to output an HTML a (anchor) link in the place of the <h:commandLink> element.
The behavior you're looking for, namely responding to mouse events, is client-side functionality. It happens in the browser, not at the web server, so no JSF is involved. The solution is to handle the mouse events in JavaScript, not JSF. You will typically set (or remove) the CSS attribute display:none on the id called btn (unfortunately it's slightly more complex as JSF will mangle the element id a bit). There are lots of posts here on StackOverflow that deal with how to handle client-side events in JavaScript. Using jQuery for example is a really common approach.
I recommend to get started you take a look at the blog of one of our best JSF resources and long-time StackOverflow user BalusC: http://balusc.blogspot.com.
There's a lot to learn and you'll get a good start by going there first (and searching for his posts on SO).
Good luck.

JSF render phase (why is my code being executed?)

I'm currently investigating the performance of a JSF application. I have noticed that code is being executed even though rendered is set to false. For example, take this piece of code:
<h:panelGroup rendered="#{bean.render}">
<my composite component here/>
</h:panelGroup>
Even though #{bean.render} returns false, I can clearly see from debug logs, that the code for my composite component is being executed during the render phase. It also looks like the code is being executed before #{bean.render} is even called. It isn't rendered in the HTML returned to the client, but it still appears that the server is executing the code.
Can anyone explain this?
Thanks.
Composite components are built during render response phase. JSF needs to populate the component tree first and then generate HTML based on the component tree. You're inside the composite component apparently referencing some bean properties which are mandatory to be evaluated during view build time.
If you'd like to conditionally control the building of the composite component instead of the rendering, then you need to use a conditional view build time tag instead of the rendered attribute. JSTL offers the <c:if> and <c:choose> for that.
<c:if test="#{bean.build}">
<my:composite />
</c:if>
See also:
JSTL in JSF2 Facelets... makes sense?
Jsf have to know if your components are rendered or disabled or whatever. Let say you say disabled="false" it is shown on clint side and client may change value and submit the form, even though javascript is disabled by the client, jsf checks it's disabled false or true on server side. if it was true it is not acceptable and never comes to your bean because of process validation phase of jsf, same as rendered="false"

Data in <h:inputText readonly="true"> disappears when command button is clicked

I am using JSF 1.1. I have a JSF page with a request scoped bean and a readonly input field.
<h:inputText id="dt" value="#{bean.sdate}" readonly="#{bean.disable}" />
<a onclick="cal('dt');"><img src="fr.gif" border="0"></a>
When I set the input value using JavaScript and click on command button, then the data in input field disappears.
How is this caused and how can I solve it.
That's because the property is set to readonly. If this evaluates true, then JSF won't process the submitted value and hence the model won't be updated. If you want to set it to readonly on rendering the view and have JSF to process the submitted value, then you'd need to make it to evaluate true on render response phase only. You can use FacesContext#getRenderResponse() for this. You'd need to do this in your isDisable() method.
public boolean isDisable() { // TODO: rename to isReadonly().
return FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getRenderResponse();
}
Note: in JSF2 you could access FacesContext#getCurrentInstance() by #{facesContext} in the view as well, this saves some boilerplate in the model:
<h:inputText ... readonly="#{facesContext.renderResponse}" />
Also note that when you're using JSF2 <f:viewParam>, then this approach won't work on GET requests anymore. See also Make a p:calendar readonly for the explanation and workaround.

Resources