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

Junit - Test fails on French or German string assertion

In my previous post about building a regex to check a text without special characters but allow German and French . I met a problem that the unit test works fine on my machine using Eclipse, but it was fail when running on Jenkins' build job. Here is my test: @Test public void shouldAllowFrenchAndGermanCharacters(){ String source = "ÄäÖöÜüß áÁàÀâÂéÉèÈêÊîÎçÇ"; assertFalse(SpecialCharactersUtils.isExistSpecialCharater(source)); } Production code: public static boolean isExistNotAllowedCharacters(String source){ Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z_0-9_ÄäÖöÜüß áÁàÀâÂéÉèÈêÊîÎçÇ]*$"); Matcher matcher = regex.matcher(source); return !matcher.matches(); } The result likes the following: Failed tests: SpecialCharactersUtilsTest.shouldAllowFrenchAndGermanCharacters:32 null A guy from stackoverflow.com says: "This is probably due to the default encoding used for your Java source files. The ö in the string literal in the J...

The HelloWorld example of JSF 2.2 with Myfaces

I just did by myself create a very simple app "HelloWorld" of JSF 2.2 with a concrete implementation Myfaces that we can use it later on for our further JSF trying out. I attached the source code link at the end part. Just follow these steps below: 1. Create a Maven project in Eclipse (Kepler) with a simple Java web application archetype "maven-archetype-webapp". Maven should be the best choice for managing the dependencies , so far. JSF is a web framework that is the reason why I chose the mentioned archetype for my example. 2. Import dependencies for JSF implementation - Myfaces (v2.2.10) into file pom.xml . The following code that is easy to find from  http://mvnrepository.com/  with key words "myfaces". <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core</groupId> <artifactId>myfaces-api</artifactId> <version>2.2.10</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core<...

How to apply Lean - Kanban for your business

This is the topic of Scrum Breakfast meetup this time, speaker: Ms. Phuong Bui - Technical Project Manager of YOOSE Pte. Ltd. http://www.meetup.com/Scrum-Breakfast-Vietnam-Agile-and-Scrum-Meetup/events/230313727/ Lean comes from Lean manufacturing is a method that focuses on elimination of wastes. In other words, this is a set of principles for archiving the quality, speed and customer alignment. The first time I knew about the term "Lean" is  from the book Software Craftsmanship . Sandro recommends if we want to transform our pet projects into a real business, we should get familiar with Lean Startup concepts. In this talk, Ms. Phuong pointed out some major wastes includes information (ex: unclear requirements), processes (ex: waiting), physical environment and people. Knowing what the problems should be the best way to eliminate them. The difference between  Single item flow and Batch processing is the second main point; and it is the Lean's idea. Batch pr...

Why Business Rules Engine Matter

"A good DSL minimizes the 'communication gap' between a domain concept and the code that implements it" - Robert C. Martin A Use Case It looks like adopting a new technology is always driven by a business need. The organizations, such as banks, have their own business processes (such as data gathering and document management). These processes are different from others but usually the differences are not big. How do we build a product which can be reused the similar features but still be adaptable with the specific requirements of each bank? Then, the answer is we should have a library/framework. There is an idea that we can implement this library/framework by using a business rules engine. Which has the following benefits: Be able to modify implementation of business domain at runtime (such as XML, CSV) S ource code is more readable for both developers and domain experts. Therefore, source code can be consider it as a document Since Business Rules Engine...

Java 8 - Persistent data structure

The following is a series of posts about "functional programming in Java" which is the result of my understanding by reading the book " Java 8 in Action: Lambdas, Streams, and Functional-style Programming, by Alan Mycroft and Mario Fusco ". 1. Why functional programming? 2. Functional programming in Java 8 3. Java 8 - Using Functions as Values 4. Java 8 - Persistent data structure Persistent data structure is also known as a simple technique but it's very important. Its other names are functional data structure and immutable data structure. Why is it "persistent"? Their values persist and are isolated from changes happening elsewhere. That's it! This technique is described as below: If you need a data structure to represent the result of a computation, you should make a new one and not mutable an existing data structure. Destructive updates version public static A doSomething(A a){ a.setProp1("new value"); return...