Zack Marrapese

I found out my problem. According to the manual, there are some limitations on submitting from a modal pane:
1.) A form must be declared within the modal panel (and therefore, the modal panel must be defined outside any existing form to avoid nested forms).
2.) The modal panel can't be included onto the page. It must be in the base of the page.

Hope this helps others that have this problem.
~Zack

I am working on a project in which I would like to pop up a window which will do some basic form submission. After this I would like to return to the previous view.

I chose the rich:modalPanel component for this. I have no trouble showing and hiding the window. However, when I try to call any actionListener from a command object within the modal panel, it does not reach the actionListener. Here is the relevant portion of my code:

TEMPLATE:
<h1> <ui:insert name="pageHeader" /> </h1> <a4j:form> <ui:insert name="pageBody" /> </a4j:form> <a4j:form> <ui:insert name="modalPanel" /> </a4j:form>

modalPanel defined:
<ui:define name="modalPanel"> <rich:modalPanel id="newPanel" autosized="true" > <f:facet name="header"> <h:panelGroup style="height:24px;"> <h:outputText value="New Brand Type"></h:outputText> </h:panelGroup> </f:facet> <f:facet name="controls"> <rich:componentControl for="newPanel" attachTo="hideWindow" operation="hide" event="onclick"/> </f:facet> <h:panelGrid columns="2"> <h:outputLabel for="brandName">Brand Name: </h:outputLabel> <h:inputText id="brandName" value="#{globalBrandTypesBB.editBrandName}" styleClass="rich-input-text" /> <h:outputLabel for="brandDesc">Description: </h:outputLabel> <h:inputTextarea id="brandDesc" value="#{globalBrandTypesBB.editBrandDesc}" styleClass="rich-textarea" cols="40" rows="10" /> <h:outputLabel for="brandCategory">Category: </h:outputLabel> <h:selectOneMenu id="brandCategory" styleClass="rich-select" value="#{globalBrandTypesBB.editCategoryID}"> <f:selectItems value="#{globalBrandTypesBB.brandCategoriesList}" /> </h:selectOneMenu> </h:panelGrid> <h:inputHidden value="#{globalBrandTypesBB.editBrandTypeID}" /> <a4j:commandButton styleClass="rich-button" actionListener="#{globalBrandTypesBB.saveBrandType}" value="Save" reRender="globalBrandTypesTable" id="saveButton"/> <a4j:commandButton styleClass="rich-button" value="Cancel" id="hideWindow"/> </rich:modalPanel> </ui:define>

Backing bean:
public void saveBrandType(ActionEvent event) { try { if (this.editCategoryID == 0 || this.editBrandName.equals("")) { this.createMessage("Select a category and name in order to create or update a brand type.", FacesMessage.SEVERITY_WARN); } else { EjbManagerBB ejbManager = (EjbManagerBB)this.getSessionScope().get("ejbManagerBB"); BrandType bt; if (this.editBrandTypeID == 0) { bt = new BrandType(); bt.setBrandCategoryID(this.getEditCategoryID()); bt.setDescription(this.getEditBrandDesc()); bt.setName(this.getEditBrandName()); ejbManager.getTitleBrandProcess().createBrandType(bt); } else { bt = ejbManager.getTitleBrandProcess().findBrandType(this.editBrandTypeID); bt.setBrandCategoryID(this.getEditCategoryID()); bt.setDescription(this.getEditBrandDesc()); bt.setName(this.getEditBrandName()); ejbManager.getTitleBrandProcess().updateBrandType(bt); } this.createMessage("Brand type was successfully saved."); } } catch (Exception e) { this.createMessage("There was an error saving this brand type. Please try again later.", FacesMessage.SEVERITY_ERROR); } }

However, the actionListener is never even reached (confirmed in debug). Any suggestions?

never used tomahawk datatable...but on h:dataTable and rich:dataTable, you can create an action using a command button, command link, or whatever you like just like you do when you are outside a data table.

I think the compatability issue would be with websphere, not RAD (?). And as far as that goes, it supports JSF 1.1 I believe. It is way behind and a very buggy IDE also...my company just stopped using it.

You should seriously consider using RichFaces. They do an excellent job of it, and there is no real reason to re-invent the wheel. You will end up spending a ton of time and the result will be inferior to richFaces/ajax4jsf anyways...they have been working on this project for years.

Core Javaserver Faces is a great book.

Thanks for the informative reply, Tim! How would I instantiate the session bean the old fashioned way? I am relatively new to JSF, and haven't instantiated them manually before.

that will happen if the button isn't actually within a form...make sure there is a form tag around that button.

Hi all-
I have a session scoped backing bean which is never actually referenced in the view. It is simply used to store EJBs, which can be retrieved by my request scoped beans (which are referenced in my .xhtml files).

However, how can I actually get this session bean into the FacesContext's session scope map? Since it's never actually used on the page, it's never loaded into session.

I realize I could put a dummy variable into the session scope bean and tie it to a hidden field in the view. However, that seems really hacky...any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
~Zack

you should be able to access it using #{param.keyName}

Creating custom components is REALLY easy with facelets.

You can still access any folder that's in your web content folder by making the URL reflect the file structure.

Not sure why you would not want to use AJAX...check out the richFaces/ajax4jsf libraries...they really are wonderful.

They hide all the javascript and what-not involved in HTTP requests and just give an extremely easy-to-use set of tags.

two problems:

1.) your setter for select items is never actually getting called. You could probably fix the problem by calling that setter in your constructor.

2.) you are binding the value of f:selectItems to plList, but your getter is for options. You can either change the getter to getPlList, or you can change the value binding to selectItemsBean.options

Hope this helps
~Zack

Or a more JSF-like way to do it would be to bind your loginError and error values into a backing bean in the faces-config and then use <h:messages /> and generate a message depending on whether or not loginError is null:
if (this.loginError != null) { FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().addMessage(null, new FacesMessage(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_ERROR, this.error, null)); }