I've been asked to refactor the following code, which works:
<a4j:commandButton type="image"
image="/someImage.gif"
action="#{SomeViewController.someDeleteAction}"
onclick="return confirm('#{msg['a.message']}');"
render="someDataTableWithItems">
<f:setPropertyActionListener
target="#{SomeViewModel.selectedItem}" value="#{item}" />
</a4j:commandButton>
..to an alternative which allowed to use a custom popup to confirm the action. This snippet is embedded into a column inside a rich:dataTable component. #{item} is a reference to the object assigned to the row where this button is (defined in the dataTable as var="item").
I decided to do a JSF composite component (first one I do) to have something I could reuse. It's based on this answer by elias
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
xmlns:a4j="http://richfaces.org/a4j"
xmlns:rich="http://richfaces.org/rich"
xmlns:cc="http://java.sun.com/jsf/composite">
<cc:interface>
<cc:attribute name="message" default="#{msg['a.default.message']}" />
<cc:attribute name="header"
default="#{msg['a.default.header']}" />
<cc:attribute name="action" required="true"
method-signature="java.lang.String action()" />
<cc:attribute name="actionListener" required="false"
method-signature="java.lang.String action()" />
<cc:attribute name="value" default="Send" />
<cc:attribute name="cancelBtn" default="#{msg['a.default.cancel']}" />
<cc:attribute name="confirmBtn" default="#{msg['a.default.ok']}" />
<cc:attribute name="render" default="@form" />
<cc:attribute name="type" default="submit" />
<cc:attribute name="image" required="false"/>
<cc:attribute name="tooltip" required="false" />
</cc:interface>
<cc:implementation>
<a4j:commandButton type="#{cc.attrs.type}" rendered="#{empty cc.attrs.actionListener and not empty cc.attrs.image}"
image="#{cc.attrs.image}" value="#{cc.attrs.value}"
oncomplete="#{rich:component('somePopup')}.show()">
<rich:tooltip followMouse="false" showDelay="1000" rendered="#{not empty cc.attrs.tooltip}">
#{cc.attrs.tooltip}
</rich:tooltip>
</a4j:commandButton>
<a4j:commandButton type="#{cc.attrs.type}" rendered="#{not empty cc.attrs.actionListener and not empty cc.attrs.image}"
actionListener="#{cc.attrs.actionListener}"
image="#{cc.attrs.image}" value="#{cc.attrs.value}"
oncomplete="#{rich:component('somePopup')}.show()">
<rich:tooltip followMouse="false" showDelay="1000" rendered="#{not empty cc.attrs.tooltip}">
#{cc.attrs.tooltip}
</rich:tooltip>
</a4j:commandButton>
<a4j:commandButton type="#{cc.attrs.type}" rendered="#{empty cc.attrs.actionListener and empty cc.attrs.image}"
value="#{cc.attrs.value}"
oncomplete="#{rich:component('somePopup')}.show()">
<rich:tooltip followMouse="false" showDelay="1000" rendered="#{not empty cc.attrs.tooltip}">
#{cc.attrs.tooltip}
</rich:tooltip>
</a4j:commandButton>
<a4j:commandButton type="#{cc.attrs.type}" rendered="#{not empty cc.attrs.actionListener and empty cc.attrs.image}"
actionListener="#{cc.attrs.actionListener}" value="#{cc.attrs.value}"
oncomplete="#{rich:component('somePopup')}.show()">
<rich:tooltip followMouse="false" showDelay="1000" rendered="#{not empty cc.attrs.tooltip}">
#{cc.attrs.tooltip}
</rich:tooltip>
</a4j:commandButton>
<rich:popupPanel id="somePopup"
header="#{cc.attrs.header}" autosize="true" resizeable="false">
<p>#{cc.attrs.message}</p>
<a4j:commandButton action="#{SomeViewController.someDeleteAction}" <!-- It should be #{cc.attrs.action} but I just put this for debug -->
value="#{cc.attrs.confirmBtn}" render="#{cc.attrs.render}"
oncomplete="#{rich:component('somePopup')}.hide()">
<cc:insertChildren />
</a4j:commandButton>
<h:commandButton value="#{cc.attrs.cancelBtn}"
onclick="#{rich:component('somePopup')}.hide(); return false;" />
</rich:popupPanel>
</cc:implementation>
</html>
..and replace the previous a4j:commandButton with this:
<my:buttonConfirm type="image" id="someID"
image="/someImage.gif"
action="#{SomeViewController.someDeleteAction}"
message="#{msg['a.confirmation.message']}"
render="someDataTableWithItems"
tooltip="#{msg['a.tooltip.message']}">
<f:setPropertyActionListener for="someID"
target="#{SomeViewModel.selectedItem}" value="#{item}" />
</my:buttonConfirm>
The popup appears and you can cancel the action, but when confirming it, SomeViewModel is reinstantiated again, losing the previous bean in scope.
The scope is a custom view scope got from here
I then changed the scope of the model to this one:
@Component("SomeViewModel")
@ViewScoped
Although I tried to use @ManagedBean instead of @Component, the app gave me autowiring errors so I left @Component. The scope was now kept.
I don't know whether the mix of JSF and Spring annotations on this way may have any other consequences.
However the scope of SomeViewModel was now fine, the f:setPropertyActionListener target was never set and the action #{SomeViewController.someDeleteAction} was never called. I have been unable to debug this (not sure where to put breakpoints to see what happens in the middle).
Thanks in advance for your help.
