JSF 1.1: selectManyCheckbox not submitting properly

Question

I have a problem with the selectManyCheckbox tag..

We are using JSF 1.1 inside a JBoss Portal (i think its version 4.2, but not sure)..

I have the following JSF markup:

<h:selectManyCheckbox layout="lineDirection" 
   value="#{personBean.selectedPersonsLongArray}"
   id="selectedPersons">
   <f:selectItems value="#{personBean.persons}" />
</h:selectManyCheckbox>

(And of course I have a button that submits the form). My bean looks like this:

    public class PersonBean {
        private List<SelectItem> persons;

        private List<SelectItem> selectedPersons = new ArrayList<SelectItem>(); // +getter +setter
        private List<String> selectedPersonsStringList = new ArrayList<String>();// +getter +setter
        private List<Long> selectedPersonsStringList = new ArrayList<Long>();// +getter +setter
        private long[] selectedPersonsLongArray = new long[0];// +getter +setter
        private String[] selectedPersonsStringArray = new String[0]; // +getter +setter

        public void getPersons(){
            if(persons == null){
                List<Person> personsFromDb = // get from DB
                persons = new ArrayList<Person>(personsFromDb.size());
                for(Person person : personsFromDb){
                    // ID of a person is a long
                    persons.add(new SelectItem(person.getId(), person.getName()));
                }
            }
            return persons;
        }

        public void setPersons(List<SelectItem> persons){
            this.persons = persons;
        }

        ...
    }

The bean is session scoped and Person's Id property is of type long. I have tried binding the value of the tag to all the types listed in the bean. On submit, all but selectedPersonLongArray gives a "Validation Error" message. If I bind it to selectedPersonLongArray i get an error saying selectedPersons must be filled out.

As I said, the bean is session scoped, and I have double-checked that the persons list does not change between requests, which seems to be a common problem with this tag.

Any ideas?

BalusC · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-30T12:32:44.093

3

The generic type information is lost during runtime. All JSF/EL (actually, reflection) sees is a List, not a List<Long>. The default type is String as that's just the standard return type of request.getParameter(). This can never return true on a equals() check on any of the Long values in the list of available items. That explains the "Validation Error: Value is not valid" error.

You need a fixed type property such as long[] or Long[] so that JSF/EL will be able to determine the right type by reflection.

If you really need it to be a List<Long> due to design restrictions, then you should explicitly specify a converter. Otherwise JSF will just fill it with unconverted String objects which would in the end only cause ClassCastException when the business code starts to iterate over it.

You can use the JSF builtin javax.faces.Long converter for this.

<h:selectManyCheckbox ... converter="javax.faces.Long">

Update: based on the comments, the long[] has most likely caused a conversion error, while Long[] works. This is most likely a JSF 1.1 specific bug. Just stick to Long[] then.

edited Oct 30 '12 at 12:32

answered Oct 30 '12 at 11:34

BalusC

1,082,665
372
3,610
3,555

Following your advice, I have bound the selectManyCheckbox to the long array property, but this gives me an error saying that selectedPersons is required (my own translation as I'm not running english locale). As I said in the question, the getPersons list does not change between requests. – Morten Jacobsen Oct 30 '12 at 11:55
The exact error message (and locale) would however be appreciated. Further, are you certain that there are no other validators on the component which you omitted from the question for brevity? E.g. `required="true"`, etc. – BalusC Oct 30 '12 at 11:59
The JSF tag is copied verbatim (I only changed the name of the bean because it's rather long).. The error message is "selectedPersons skal udfyldes" in the da-DK locale. – Morten Jacobsen Oct 30 '12 at 12:04
Oh, that'll be a customized message bundle file. On what key exactly is this exact message (`{0} skal udfyldes`) been specified? – BalusC Oct 30 '12 at 12:11
Now it works. I seems that JSF wasn't happy about me using a long[]... Changing the type to Long[] seems to make it work. If you could update your answer to only include Long[] that would be great for future reference :) – Morten Jacobsen Oct 30 '12 at 12:23
Hmm, that's perhaps a JSF 1.1 bug then. I'm really curious, what's the message bundle key associated with this message? – BalusC Oct 30 '12 at 12:26
Well, there are three keys mapped to it, javax.faces.component.UIInput.REQUIRED, javax.faces.component.UIInput.CONVERSION, and javax.faces.component.UISelectOne.INVALID.. I didn't figure out which one, because when I changed them to see which was the problem, the code worked, because I apparently previously had changed from long[] to Long[].. I can try to find out which exactly if you want? – Morten Jacobsen Oct 30 '12 at 12:30
Okay. Thank you for the information. That's most likely the `CONVERSION` one. – BalusC Oct 30 '12 at 12:31
It seems that JSF 1.1 cannot figure out how to preselect items when the backing bean property is of type Long[]... I can preselect items by filling a SelectItem[] array and setting that as the value, however, with this I run into the issue with the CONVERSION property on submit as discussed above. Any ideas? – Morten Jacobsen Oct 30 '12 at 14:51
That's a nasty bug. Have you ever considered upgrading to JSF 1.2? A JSF 1.1 webapp is technically without any necessary code changes upgradeable to JSF 1.2. It would be just a matter of replacing the libraries. You can thereafter gradually polish by redeclaring faces-config.xml as 1.2 instead of 1.1 and removing all f:verbatim clutter. – BalusC Oct 30 '12 at 14:53

JSF 1.1: selectManyCheckbox not submitting properly

1 Answers1