Variable number of columns within dataTable

[Rory Evans]

Hi,

On my backing bean, I have a list of Player objects. Each Player object has a list of Card objects.

On my jsf page, I want to display a dataTable with one row per Player and one column per Card. Since each player may have a different number of cards, I need to have a way of determining how many columns to create.

My initial idea was to use something like:

 <h:dataTable value="#{backingBean.players}" var="player">
                <ui:repeat value="#{player.cards}" var="card">
                    <h:column>
                         .....................
                    </h:column>
                </ui:repeat>
            </h:dataTable
  

but this renders no columns at all (after reading around the subject, I understand why this is the case). Can anyone suggest a suitable alternative or workaround for the problem described above?

Thanks

[Tim Holloway]

You're not the first one to discover that the ui:repeat element doesn't work well in tables.

Your best bet, I think, is to bind the table itself to a backing bean and construct the columns in backing bean code. Or you could use the RichFaces DataGrid control.