Display using DataTable

[Veera Velisetti]

Hi,

I have a list of items. Lets say list has the following elements: A,B,C,D,E,F.
I want to display these elements in a h:dataTable in the following manner.

A B C
D E F

arranged in 3 cols and in the said fashion above.
I am new to JSF and am struggling to get it.
If any one has some sample code or any pointers, please post it back.
That will be of great help.

Veera

[Christian Nicoll]

Hi Veera,

I don't think that the h:datatable is a good way to solve this problem. I would use the datatable component for collections of complex objects, but to display simple strings in a table I would use the h:panelGrid tag:

<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" prefix="h"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" prefix="f"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c"%>
<f:view>
	<h:form>
		<h:panelGrid columns="3">
			<c:forEach items="${myBean.items}" var="item">
				<f:verbatim>
					<c:out value="${item}"></c:out>
				</f:verbatim>
			</c:forEach>
		</h:panelGrid>
	</h:form>
</f:view>

Note that I've use the forEach-tag of the JSTL and so I had to make sure that the JSTL is installed on my server. To complete the coding you need a PoJo which you bind to the myBean variable (faces-config.xml).

<managed-bean>
		<managed-bean-name>myBean</managed-bean-name>
		<managed-bean-class>test.jsf.panelgroup.MyBean</managed-bean-class>
		<managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
</managed-bean>

Your Bean needs a getItems method:

public List<String> getItems() {
		if (items == null) {
			items = new ArrayList<String>();
		}
		
//If you use the session-scope for you managed-bean and then request several times the jsp,
//then you will see further entries in your table
		items.add("A");
		items.add("B");
		items.add("C");
		items.add("D");
		items.add("E");
		items.add("F");
		
		return items;
}