Skip to main content

JSF 2 - Dynamically manipulating the component tree with system events

Let's suppose we want to modify the metadata (attributes)  of elements such as render, requried, maxlength but we do not define in JSF tags. The manipulating components can be conducted in Drools files, for example. How could we do? I think that is what we need to change something of component tree during JSF life-cycle.


JSF supports event handling throughout the JSF life-cycle. In this post, I use two events: postAddToView for scanning components tree and preRenderView for manipulating the meta of components before rendering to GUI.

I modified my own project from previous post for this example. This is my first further JSF trying out with the project as I said before. :)

We define the tags f:event below the form - a container component of the components which we want to work on. The valid values for the attribute type for f:event can be found from tag library document of JSF 2.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
 xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
 xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html">
 <h:head>
  <title>JSF - System events Example</title>
 </h:head>
 <h:body>
  <h:form id="helloForm">
   <f:event listener="#{guiHanlder.onScanView}" type="postAddToView"/>
   <f:event listener="#{guiHanlder.onManipulateView}" type="preRenderView"/>
   
   <h:outputText value="#{helloBean.greeting}" id="greetingOutputTxt"/>
   <br/>
   <h:inputText value="#{helloBean.name}" id="nameInputText"/>
  </h:form>
 </h:body>
</html>

This is the managed bean below is just used for displaying information.

package vn.nvanhuong.jsf_myfaces;

import javax.faces.bean.ManagedBean;

@ManagedBean(name = "helloBean")
public class HelloManagedBean {
 private String greeting;
 private String name;
 
 public String getGreeting() {
  return greeting;
 }

 public void setGreeting(String greeting) {
  this.greeting = greeting;
 }

 public String getName() {
  return name;
 }

 public void setName(String name) {
  this.name = name;
 }
}

Here, I just used a method from a Java class to manipulate the components. In my future posts, I am going to try to call a Drools files instead.

package vn.nvanhuong.jsf_myfaces;

import java.util.List;

import javax.faces.bean.ManagedBean;
import javax.faces.component.UIComponent;
import javax.faces.component.html.HtmlInputText;
import javax.faces.component.html.HtmlOutputText;
import javax.faces.event.PostAddToViewEvent;
import javax.faces.event.PreRenderViewEvent;

@ManagedBean(name = "guiHanlder")
public class GuiManipulatingHandler {
 private List uiComponents;
 
 public void onScanView(PostAddToViewEvent event) {
  UIComponent rootView = event.getComponent();
  uiComponents = rootView.getChildren();
 }

 public void onManipulateView(PreRenderViewEvent event) {
  for (UIComponent uiComponent : uiComponents) {
   if(uiComponent instanceof HtmlOutputText){
    ((HtmlOutputText) uiComponent).setValue("Hello");
   }
   if(uiComponent instanceof HtmlInputText){
    ((HtmlInputText) uiComponent).setMaxlength(100);
    ((HtmlInputText) uiComponent).setValue("JSF system events");
   }
  }
 }
}


I ran on Tomcat (v7) and the result looks like:



Source code: https://github.com/vnnvanhuong/jsf_myfaces/tree/jsf_system_events

Reference:
[1]. http://balusc.omnifaces.org/2006/09/debug-jsf-lifecycle.html

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Styling Sort Icons Using Font Awesome for Primefaces' Data Table

So far, Primefaces has used image sprites for displaying the sort icons. This leads to a problem if we want to make a different style for these icons; for example, I would make the icon "arrow up" more blurry at the first time the table loading because I want to highlight the icon "arrow down". I found a way that I can replace these icons with Font Awesome icons. We will use "CSS Pseudo-classes" to achieve it. The hardest thing here is that we should handle displaying icons in different cases. There is a case both "arrow up" and "arrow down" showing and other case is only one of these icons is shown. .ui-sortable-column-icon.ui-icon.ui-icon-carat-2-n-s { background-image: none; margin-left: 5px; font-size: 1.1666em; position: relative; } .ui-sortable-column-icon.ui-icon.ui-icon-carat-2-n-s:not(.ui-icon-triangle-1-s)::before { content: "\f106"; font-family: "FontAwesome"; position: ...

Java Core - Top 10 Questions Every Developer Should Know

#RandomlyPickedByMe What is the difference between Javascript and Java? Difference between StringBuilder and StringBuffer? Why do I get "SomeType@a3fde" when I print my code? Why is String immutable? Why "equals" method when we have "==" operator? Is List<Dog> a subclass of List<Animal>? Why shouldn't we use raw type? Is Java “pass-by-reference” or “pass-by-value”? What's the advantage of a Java enum versus a class with public static final fields? Why "double x = 0.1 + 0.2" and result of print(x) is 0.30000000000000004? 1. What is the difference between Javascript and Java? Holy crap! (Vietnamese: Thế quái nào lại có câu hỏi ngớ ngẩn vậy chứ?) "Java and Javascript are similar like Car and Carpet are similar." - Greg Hewgill (on StackOverflow) 2. Difference between StringBuilder and StringBuffer String is immutable. StringBuilder and StringBuffer are mutable. StringBuffer is thread-safe. String...

Math fundamentals and Katex

It was really tough for me to understand many articles about data science due to the requirements of understanding mathematics (especially linear algebra). I’ve started to gain some basic knowledges about Math by reading a book first. The great tool Typora and stackedit with supporting Katex syntax simply helps me to display Math-related symbols. Let’s start! The fundamental ideas of mathematics: “doing math” with numbers and functions. Linear algebra: “doing math” with vectors and linear transformations. 1. Solving equations Solving equations means finding the value of the unknown in the equation. To find the solution, we must break the problem down into simpler steps. E.g: x 2 − 4 = 4 5 x 2 − 4 + 4 = 4 5 + 4 x 2 = 4 9 x = 4 9 ∣ x ∣ = 7 x = 7  or  x = − 7 \begin{aligned} x^2 - 4 &= 45\\ x^2 - 4 + 4 &= 45 + 4\\ x^2 &= 49\\ \sqrt{x}&=\sqrt{49}\\ |x| &= 7\\ x=7 &\text{ or } x=-7 \end{aligned} x 2 − 4 x 2 − 4 + 4 x 2 x ​ ∣ x ∣ x = 7 ​ = 4 5 = 4 ...

My must-have apps for daily work

There is no doubt that cool apps can help us be more productive and enjoyable at work. For the time being, I really love the following apps which are used by me almost every day. 1. A personal Kanban In fact, a personal kanban is the most useful app for me. Why does it matter? It is not just a to-do list, but it keeps me motivated every day because it helps me be able to know what my "big picture" is. I usually set up my plans together with a path to reach them.  KanbanFlow  is my preferred tool. KanbanFlow 2. A terminal Needless to say, a terminal is a must-have app for every developer, especially the ones use macOS/Linux. Due to its importance, I love to decorate and enhance it to be super exciting with various tools such as  iTerm ,  oh-my- zsh , and  thefuck . ;) iTerm + oh-my-zsh 3. A documentation "ecosystem" As a developer, I can not remember all things that I have experimented a day. Moreover, a document is really useful for sharing an...

Fulfilling Your Contribution Needs

Human resource management motivation Managing human today is quite different from the industrial age which treats people as just "chickens". Rather than people now are very important to the success of an organization. People are an organization's special resource. They should be encouraged to grow to contribute their effort and creativeness to their beloved working environment because the contribution is one of their most needs in life. Training people: getting rid of the ineffective model and adopting the new one The ineffective model of training people: Hiring new people --> giving them a crash course once --> expecting them working effectively.  That somehow makes sense but you're about to expect a luck because you do not really spend your effort for mentoring them. If they can work effectively, well...lucky you! Otherwise, you will blame that these people are ineffective and you let them go and hire the new ones. What a waste of time! The new effe...