"on page load" in JSF

[Tim Wise]

Hi all,

Could someone advise me how to implement a JSF page so that some method in a certain backing bean is executed each time the page is displayed to user? Something like "on page load" action

Thanks,
Tim

[Kavita Tipnis]

A Backing Bean in a request scope can be one of the options.
Place your code/ method call in the constructor of the request scoped backing bean
and it will be invoked every time your jsp page is requested

[Tim Wise]

Thanks. Yes, agree. I also had that idea, but this doesn't work for me because non of the GUI components are initialized when the constructor is executed. If I have a control binding - those variables are not yet initialized.

I also tried to use @PostConstruct - but this doesn't work either - controls are not yet initialized by the time the method is executed. Although, I've been using SessionScoped bean in this test.. I'll try the RequestScope bean + PostConstruct - maybe this makes sense.

[Tim Wise]

OK, so here is a workaround I use currently:

JSF page looks like:

<f:view>
  <h:form>
    <!-- entire form goes here -->
    <div style="visibility: hidden;">
      <h:outputText value="#{myBean.onPageLoad}"/>
    </div>
  </h:form>
</f:view>

Then, my bean looks like:

@ManagedBean(name = "myBean")
@SessionScoped
public class MyBean {
  public String getOnPageLoad() {
    // "on page load" logic goes here
  }
}

But this is not convenient at all... It works but I myself don't like the idea - I need to use a <h : outputText /> just to invoke the method, plus the method itself is getBlaBlaBla() instead of only blaBlaBla(). Is there a way to execute an arbitrary backing bean method from within JSF page?

[Smitha H Rao]

I had same requirements in my project and I have used the requestscoped bean and put the code in a method marked @PostConstruct.
PostConstruct method gets called after constructor and all other initialization codes by the framework.