I have a situation in my form that the user must fill at least one of the fields. Using "required" command, i cannot do that. What is the best way to validate this in seam ? i dont want to use javascript.
Thanks!
Just let the required attribute depend its outcome on the presence of the other input fields in the request parameter map.
<h:form id="form">
<h:inputText id="input1" value="#{bean.input1}" required="#{empty param['form:input2'] and empty param['form:input3']}" />
<h:inputText id="input2" value="#{bean.input2}" required="#{empty param['form:input1'] and empty param['form:input3']}" />
<h:inputText id="input3" value="#{bean.input3}" required="#{empty param['form:input1'] and empty param['form:input2']}" />
</h:form>
Alternatively you could also make use of component binding and use UIInput#getValue() to check the value of the previous components and UIInput#getSubmittedValue() to check them for the yet-to-be-validated components (components are processed in the order as they appear in the component tree). This way you don't need to hardcode client ID's. You only need to ensure that binding names doesn't conflict with existing managed bean names.
<h:form>
<h:inputText binding="#{input1}" required="#{empty input2.submittedValue and empty input3.submittedValue}" />
<h:inputText binding="#{input2}" required="#{empty input1.value and empty input3.submittedValue}" />
<h:inputText binding="#{input3}" required="#{empty input1.value and empty input2.value}" />
</h:form>
JSF2 will let you do a form-level validation. For now, you'll have to make do with either:
Validate in a Bean after form
submission and populate a
FacesMessage to the user if it fails.
Add a validator to one field and in
that validator load in the other
fields and check their values.
If you dont want to use required attribute or javascript, then there are two ways.
One of them is creating a validator, but in my opinion that is too overkill.
I would just check if the input is null or empty in your bean.
if ("".equals(theFieldYouWantToCheck) || theFieldYouWantToCheck == null) {
//Either throw exception or return "false" so that you can handle it
}
If you are using RichFaces then you could perform the validation as follows (see http://mkblog.exadel.com/ria/richfaces-ria/richfaces-built-in-client-functions/):
<h:form id="form">
<h:inputText id="input1" value="#{bean.input1}" />
<h:inputText id="input2" value="#{bean.input2}"
required="#{empty rich:findComponent('input1').submittedValue}"
requiredMessage="At least one of the fields input1 and input2 must be filled."/>
</h:form>
Note that the expression rich:findComponent('input1') is equivalent to uiComponent['input1']. The reason is that Seam provides the dynamic map uiComponent to look up UI components.
Related
I have an h:dataTable inside of an h:form, where each row has it's own h:commandButton type="submit" action="#{bean.saveChanges(item)}".
f:inputs are declared as required and they also need to match a pattern.
If every input is in the right format, then it works fine.
Otherwise it needs only one input to be wrong and an updating function on a commandButton corresponding to a completely different item in another row seems not to be called, therefore not updated in the database.
Also only the wrong row's validation message is displayed and the changes are maintained in the view by a (backing Spring view scoped) bean, so the user might actually think, that the initial row was indeed updated in the database too.
Is there a way, how to separate individual rows of the h:dataTable, so that the validation messages of another row does not stop other items from being updated by the method of a (Spring/backing) bean?
Use ajax to process/execute only the current row. You can achieve that by explicitly specifying the client IDs of the input components in <f:ajax execute>.
<h:form>
<h:dataTable ...>
<h:column>
<h:inputText id="foo" ... />
</h:column>
<h:column>
<h:inputText id="bar" ... />
</h:column>
<h:column>
<h:inputText id="baz" ... />
</h:column>
<h:column>
<h:commandButton ...>
<f:ajax execute="foo bar baz #this" ... />
</h:commandButton>
</h:column>
</h:dataTable>
</h:form>
This won't process the inputs in other rows. Use if necessary <f:ajax render> to update the <h:message(s)> associated with the inputs.
See also:
Understanding PrimeFaces process/update and JSF f:ajax execute/render attributes
The required on the input cause the Process validation to fail and the render response to be invoked.
A simple solution could be You could remove the required from the input and handle the case in you managed bean. Since the action would move on till Phase 5: Invoke application the valid data can be saved. For all invalid rows highlight the row by having a boolean in you data model.
I need to show the response page depending on some of the input fields. E.g. the tabid inputHidden below:
#{controllerBean.tabId}
...
<h:form id="edit">
<h:inputHidden value="#{controllerBean.tabId}" id="tabid" />
<h:inputText value="#{controllerBean.name}" id="name" />
</h:form>
But when some other input in the same form has validation error (e.g. the "name" inputText). The "controllerBean.tabId" value will not be assigned because JSF returns at validation stage.
I still need the tabId to show the page correctly and having 2 ideas in mind:
#{param['edit:tabid']}
or use binding:
#{tabId.value}
<h:inputHidden value="#{controllerBean.tabId}" id="tabid" binding="tabId" />
My question is, which of these 2 is the better or Best Practice? Or there are even better ways to do this?
update:
Note. In my specific case, the tabid is set by client javascript.
Server reply with a few items in the html.
Javascript put these items into different tabs on the page.
One of the tabs POST data to server with the current tabid in the form.
So my server need to know the tabid to show the response page with the correct tab selected.
You can add a lifecycle event listener to the component and pick the value from it. I'm going to recommend the preValidate listener:
<h:form id="edit">
<h:inputHidden value="#{controllerBean.tabId}" id="tabid">
<f:event type="preValidate" listener="#{controller.grabTabId}"/>
</h:inputHidden>
<h:inputText value="#{controllerBean.name}" id="name" />
</h:form>
This registers the listener to fire just before the validation phase of the request. You'll now have a listener defined in your backing bean to look like:
public void grabTabId(ComponentSystemEvent cse){
//obtain a reference to the component
HtmlInputHidden hiddenElement = (HtmlInputHidden)cse.getComponent();
//get the value from the component.
String hiddenValue = hiddenElement.getValue();
}
<h:form id="edit">
<h:inputHidden value="#{controllerBean.tabId}" id="tabid" />
<h:inputText value="#{controllerBean.name}" id="name" >
<p:ajax process="tabid" immediate="true" event="keyup" />
</h:inputText>
</h:form>
The above code will do is when the user put some value the value will be processed and will be set the managedBean. that what you want I think.
Another non-perfect way of accomplishing this is to move the validation logic to your action method. If validation fails, you just stop processing (and add an applicable FacesMessage). You just need to be aware that all model values will have been updated, and you can clear them if necessary.
Since updating model values on failed validation goes against the JSF lifecycle, I think any solution will be somewhat of a hack.
I have the following code in an xhtml page in JSF 2. But when the page loads I get an javascript error that
document.getElementById("country") is null or not an object.
Why is this happening?
<h:form>
<h:panelGrid columns="2">
Selected country locale :
<h:inputText id="country" value="#{country.localeCode}" size="20" />
Select a country {method binding}:
<h:selectOneMenu value="#{country.localeCode}" onchange="submit()"
valueChangeListener="#{country.countryLocaleCodeChanged}">
<f:selectItems value="#{country.countryInMap}" />
</h:selectOneMenu>
<script>
alert("hi");
document.getElementById("country").disabled=true;
</script>
</h:panelGrid>
</h:form>
It's not finding your component. Since your <h:inputText> is inside of an <h:form> the id will have the following pattern
formName:componentName. Since you did not specify an id for <h:form>, JSF will generate one for you. That's why you are seeing j_id1926454887_72d35e53:country where j_id1926454887_72d35e53 is the form id. If you want to deal with simpler id, then you should add an id value to your <h:form>. For example
<h:form id="form">
<h:inputText id="country" value="#{country.localeCode}" size="20" />
</h:form>
The id for <h:inputText> will now be form:country.
Even simpler, you could simply add prependId = "false" to your form
<h:form prependId="false">
and now your id for <h:inputText> will simply be country.
How can I get this id dynamically?
I'm going to modify your code slightly to achieve what you want (I'm thinking that you want to disable the input based on a specific event). Consider this simpler example
<h:form>
<h:inputText id="country" value="#{country.localeCode}" size="20" onclick="disableInputText(this.form)" />
</h:form>
Here I'm attaching a javascript function to an HTML DOM Event handler. In this case, I want the input to be disabled when I click on it (hence onclick). I'm also passing the form as a reference in the function. Then, define your Javascript like this.
<script>
function disableInputText(form) {
form[form.id + ":country"].disabled = true;
}
</script>
We simply grab the input in the javascript with the corresponding id via the object form and set its disabled attribute to true. (You can sort of view the form object as Map).
Also check the link below for more attributes of <h:inputText> and the different handlers you can use (the ones with on as prefix).
inputText Tag Attribute.
Also, check out the answer with the most votes to get a bigger picture on how ids are generated and other ways on how they can be determined.
How can I know the id of a JSF component so I can use in Javascript
It's seems to be a naming issue. the id of the field is not rendered as country.
i found a question that seems relevant. Composite components & ID
I've got the following h:commandButton:
<h:commandButton action="#{myBean.myAction}" value="Send">
<f:param name="myFlag" value="true" />
</h:commandButton>
I want to gain access to myFlag insinde a Validator, that's attached to another element with f:validator.
Unfortunately, when I want to retrieve the parameter through the FacesContext, I only get null returned.
Is it that the parameters are only sent once all validators have been invoked?
The <f:param> inside <h:commandButton> is only supported since JSF 2.0, but you're using JSF 1.2. The <f:param> is then only supported in <h:commandLink>.
<h:commandLink action="#{myBean.myAction}" value="Send">
<f:param name="myFlag" value="true" />
</h:commandLink>
There are alternatives, such as a <h:inputHidden> or <f:setPropertyActionListener> or <f:attribute> or in this case perhaps just plain <input type="hidden"> (the hidden input component and the action listener will only set their value during update model values which is later than validations phase; the attribute tag has better to be set on the component which invokes the validator). As the functional requirement is unclear, it's not possible to suggest the best alternative.
Update as per the comments, apparently all you need to know is if the particular button is pressed or not; in that case just give it and the parent form a fixed ID
<h:form id="form">
<h:commandButton id="send" ...>
this way it will have a fixed request parameter name of form:send and you could check on that in the validator:
if (externalContext.getRequestParameterMap().containsKey("form:send")) {
// Send button is pressed.
}
You can by the way also check for that in the required validators as follows:
<h:inputText ... required="#{not empty param['form:send']}" />
See also:
Action dependent requireness
I'm attempting to put a few drop down menus inside of an a4j:repeat. The values for the second drop down are dependent on the value selected in the first. Below is the code I am attempting to use, but it passes a blank parameter:
<a4j:repeat id="localRepeat" var="local" value="#{InstanceController.instance.locations}" rowKeyVar="row">
<h:panelGrid columns="2">
<h:outputLabel value="Theater:" />
<h:selectOneMenu id="theater" converter="#{TheaterConverter}" value="#{local.theater}">
<f:selectItems id="theaters" value="#{InstanceController.allTheaters}" />
<a4j:support event="onchange" action="#{InstanceController.getAllCountriesInTheater}" reRender="country" >
<f:param name="theater" value="#{local.theater.id}"/>
</a4j:support>
</h:selectOneMenu>
<h:outputLabel value="Country:" />
<h:selectOneMenu immediate="true" id="country" converter="#{CountryConverter}" value="#{local.country}">
<f:selectItems value="#{InstanceController.allCountriesInTheater}" />
<a4j:support event="onchange" reRender="state" />
</h:selectOneMenu>
</h:panelGrid>
<rich:spacer height="10px" />
</a4j:repeat>
If I change the f:param to send "1" instead of "#{local.theater.id}" it works as expected.
Is there a way to get the selected value of the first drop down and send it as a parameter?
This reason this doesn't work is that when the f:param tag is rendered, the current value of local.theater.id is already assigned to the parameter. So the theater param will contain the id of the theater that was selected when the page was rendered - probably null because no theater has been selected yet.
What you are trying to do is far more easy:
Just remove the f:param and use the property directly. When the a4j:support tag triggers because the selectbox value was changed, jsf will validate your form tags and assign the appropriate model values. So, when the getAllCountriesInTheater action gets executed, the local.theater property will already contain the selected theater.
Depending on how your backing beans are designed, you will probably need a parameter to identify the location for which the selectbox was changed, so the getAllCountriesInTheater action will know in which of the locations to look for the selected theater.