Using <s:selectItems> with a list of entities

[pgmjsd]

I'm passing a list of entities to <s:selectItems> and it looks like the createSelectItems() method is using using the toString() method on my entity in order to convert it to a value for the HTML rendering.

It looks like what is happening is that the NoSelectionConverter is first in the ConverterChain. This converter is returning the toString() value of the entity which causes ConverterChain.getAsString() to stop processing and return the string to
org.apache.myfaces.shared_impl.renderkit.RenderUtils.getConvertedStringValue(). The renderer then puts the toString() of the entity in the value of the option tag.

EntityConverter doesn't like this string when it comes back in the post, of course.

Has anyone seen this before? It looks like UISelectItems just doesn't work right with noSelectionLabel and an EntityConverter.

[pgmjsd]

Here's the view code:

 <h:selectOneMenu id="theSelect" value="#{myBean.selectedUser}">
 <s:selectItems value="#{myBean.users}" var="user"
 noSelectionLabel="Select a user..." label="#{user.name}"/>
 <ec:convertEntity/>
 </h:selectOneMenu>

Here's the SLSB:

@Name("myBean")
@Stateful
@Logging
public class TestBean implements TestLocal
{
 @PersistenceContext
 private EntityManager em;

 private List<User> users;

 private User selectedUser;

 public List<User> getUsers()
 {
 if (users == null)
 {
 Query q = em.createQuery("select t from User t join t.roles r where r = :role");
 q.setParameter("role", Role.SPECIAL_ROLE);
 //noinspection unchecked
 users = q.getResultList();
 }
 return users;
 }

 public User getSelectedUser()
 {
 return selectedUser;
 }

 public void setSelectedUser(User selectedUser)
 {
 this.selectedUser = selectedUser;
 }
 @Destroy
 @Remove
 public void destroy()
 {
 }
}

I'm using Seam 1.1.6 and EntityConverter 0.1.

The problem happens when rendering the <h:selectOneMenu> for the first time. I can see with the debugger that the ConverterChain has two converters in it: the NoSelectionConverter and the EntityConverter. The EntityConverter never get's called for the list of Users when rendering.

[pgmjsd]

So anyway... the end behavior is that I get:

Invalid selection. Selected item cannot be loaded from persistence context

When the form is submitted because the value in the option is the toString() of the User entity, which the EntityConverter doesn't understand.

[pgmjsd]

Okay, this looks like some sort of incompatibility with <s:selectItems> and <ec:entityConverter>. The NoSelectionConverter is effectively overriding the EntityConverter in the ConverterChain.

I was able to work around the problem by using my own bean that generates SelectIems with labels and converts the select item values back into the entity objects (similar to http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=SelectItems).

But... this isn't as nice as the EntityConverter, IMO.

Should I not be using EntityConverter? Is this a known issue?

[pmuir]

This is fixed in 1.2.0