Multiple Spaces in a RichFaces SuggestionBox

[J Miller]

I’m having some trouble with the RichFaces suggestionBox trimming multiple spaces from my input. I have a database table that I’m querying using a suggestionBox. Some of the entries will have multiple spaces (“A__B”, using _ as a space). If I type “A__B”, it works correctly, but if I type “A__” it trims all the spaces and just searches for “A”.

I understand that this is the default html behavior, but I need to try and find a way around it. I’ve tried using a converter (below) that converts to a non-breaking space (nbsp), and that’s not working. I’ve done some searches, but can’t seem to find a solution.

I’m using RichFaces 3.3.3 with JSF 1.2.

Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

Converter:

public class SpaceConverter implements Converter
{
	
	private int nbspValue = 160;
	private int spaceValue = 32;
	
	private char nbsp = (char) nbspValue;
	private char space = (char) spaceValue;
	
	public Object getAsObject(FacesContext context, UIComponent component, String value)
	{
		value = value.replace(nbsp, space);
		return value;
	}

	public String getAsString(FacesContext context, UIComponent component, Object value)
	{
		String result = (String)value; 
		result = result.replace(space, nbsp);
		return result;
	}
	
}