JSF Validation and oncomplete handlers

[loopingrage]

Is there a way to tell if validation failed after invoking an action using a4j:commandButton?

There are a few spots in my application where I make use of modal dialogs to request user input. I'd like to close the dialog after a successful save operation and leave it open if it fails due to validation.

This seems like a pretty common use case but I can't figure out how to extract the information from the data available to an oncomplete handler. Am I going about this the wrong way or is this just a limitation of the framework?

Thanks in advance,
Jose

[sergeysmirnov]

each ajax command in Ajax4jsf has a 'data' attribute. You can pass any data there and then use in oncomplete call.
So, you can assign some property in the backing bean and set it from the action method. If validation is OK, the action is invoked and the property is set. Otherwise, it will default value. Let 'data' attribute point to this property using EL. On the client side you can use this value to fork the behavior.
See jsFunction example how you can access to the 'data' from oncomplete

[loopingrage]

Sergey,

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm aware that in jsFunction#oncomplete, the data variable is a JSON version of whatever you specify in the data attribute of the component. However, how does one specify what data will be in an a4j:commandButton? Does a4j:commandButton have an undocumented data attribute as well?

[sergeysmirnov]

Good joke, Jose.

see: http://labs.jboss.com/file-access/default/members/jbossajax4jsf/freezone/docs/tlddoc/index.html

Only one problem with tld doc now. Attributes are not mentioned in the alphabetical order. However, the 'data' is there for each of the ajax command component.

[loopingrage]

Wow. I must have read that listing a hundred times and never saw the data attribute. Thanks Sergey! I wound up creating a utility Seam Component which returns statistics on the previously invoked action (e.g., error count, max severity, etc). I can't wait to add this feature to the base A4J action component once the source is available.

Thanks again,
Jose

[alexsmirnov]

You don't need a special bin for a check validation errors. For a error level can be used FacesContext:

data="#{context.maximumSeverity}"