Actions don't work inside a dataTable column?

[Robert Peterson]

I have a List which contants titles of books. My goal in results.jsp is to iterate through the List and display the titles to the user. Once the user selects a title, it should navigate to bookDetails.jsp. The problem is it seems that the app server ignores the action="success" tag to route to the next page. When I click on a title, it just reloads the result.jsp page. Does the dataTable construct not support embedded forms?

Here is the code for results.jsp:

<h: DataTable value="#{Controller.bookITOs}" var="currentBookITO">
<h:column id="bookColumn">

<h:form>
<h:commandLink action="success">
<h: outputText value="#{currentBookITO.title}"/>
</h:commandLink>
</h:form>
 
</h:column>
</h: DataTable>

When I take out the dataTable tag (and replace the title getter binding with regular text), it does navigate to bookDetails.jsp. So this works:

<h:form>
<h:commandLink action="success">
<h: outputText value="Some Book Title"/>
</h:commandLink>
</h:form>

Here is the relevant contents of the faces-config.xml:

  <navigation-rule>
    <from-view-id>/results.jsp</from-view-id>
    <navigation-case>
      <from-outcome>success</from-outcome>
      <to-view-id>/bookDetails.jsp</to-view-id>
    </navigation-case>
  </navigation-rule>

[ June 28, 2005: Message edited by: Robert Peterson ]

[ June 28, 2005: Message edited by: Robert Peterson ]

[ June 28, 2005: Message edited by: Robert Peterson ]

[ June 28, 2005: Message edited by: Robert Peterson ]
[ July 01, 2005: Message edited by: Robert Peterson ]

[Varun Khanna]

Here is the definiton of "action" attribute from JSF specs.

  
Attribute :[B]action [/B]
MethodBinding representing the application action to invoke when 
this component is activated by the user. The expression [B]must[/B]
evaluate to a public method that takes no parameters, and returns a 
String (the logical outcome) which is passed to the NavigationHandler for this application. 

Though your code is working in certain scenario, I would recommend you to make this change in your code. Use a method binding with your action attribute.
[ June 28, 2005: Message edited by: Varun Khanna ]

[Robert Peterson]

I appreciate your help. It turns out that an action can be a String when you want to navigate to the next page immediately. If you need more functionality you can use a method in a backing bean. From the sun J2EE 1.4 tutorial:

The outcome can be defined by the action attribute of the UICommand component that submits the form, as it is in the guessNumber example:

<h:commandButton id="submit" action="success"
value="Submit" />

The outcome can also come from the return value of an action method in a backing bean.

Just to make sure, I tried the following and the result is the same:

<h: DataTable value="#{Controller.bookITOs}" var="currentBookITO">
<h:column id="bookColumn">

<h:form>
<h:commandLink action=[B]"#{Controller.displayBookDetails}"[/B]>
<h: outputText value="#{currentBookITO.title}"/>
</h:commandLink>
</h:form>
 
</h:column>
</h: DataTable>

Using this method in the controller backing bean:

public String displayBookDetails(){return "success";}

[Varun Khanna]

So is your action method getting called at all or not?

[Robert Peterson]

It never gets called. I tried the following and the print statement never shows up:

/**
 * Action Method
 */
 public String displayBookDetails() {
   System.err.println("++++++ Entered Action Method in Backing Bean");
   return "success";
 }
 

[ June 29, 2005: Message edited by: Robert Peterson ]

[Varun Khanna]

Backing bean scope request? if yes, try changing it to session.

[Robert Peterson]

Changing the scope to session fixed it. Thanks!

With the scope at session my original attempt with action="success" works too. Do you know why it doesn't work under request? I think I read somewhere that keeping everything at the request scope is better.

[ July 01, 2005: Message edited by: Robert Peterson ]
[ July 01, 2005: Message edited by: Robert Peterson ]

[Varun Khanna]

Glad it's solved

It's a bug. This has been discussed earlier in this forum.

[Alex Skor]

damn! damn! damn! I spent 4 hours yesterday, trying back and forth without success, and your advice solved my problem completely! thanks a lot!
if you ever visit Russia, mail me and we can get some beer

I see JSF developers are not in a hurry to fix this

[Joe Jose]

Hi,

Just came to read this. I have the same problem. Doesn't give any error , displays the same page. I tried your case. But for its not working.
I am trying an example from http://courses.coreservlets.com/Course-Materials/pdf/jsf/02-Page-Navigation.pdf

Using tomcat5.5.17 and jsf1.1.3. Any idea about whats happening ?

Thanks,
Joe
[ August 23, 2006: Message edited by: Joe Jose ]