Two issues of JSF 2.0 are solved by RichFaces 4.0

[ilya40umov]

Hi folks,

Today I continued my evaluation of JSF 2.0 and RichFaces 4.0(Actully I was using the latest SNAPSHOT of RF). And I found two interesting things which I want to tell you. These things are problems in plain JSF 2.0 which were completely solved by using RF 4.0.

I do not except a possibility that both problems are only my own misconceptions about JSF 2.0.

The first problem:

I had to call a server action with ajax. So at the begining I tried to do it like this(with f:ajax and a4j:ajax):

<h:commandLink value="h_commandLink + f_ajax" action="#{testBean.doTest1}">

      <f:ajax execute="@form" render="internalPanel" event="click"/>

</h:commandLink>

<h:commandLink value="h_commandLink + a4j_ajax" action="#{testBean.doTest1}">

   <a4j:ajax execute="@form" render="internalPanel" event="click"/>

</h:commandLink>

<h:commandButton value="h_commandLink + f_ajax" action="#{testBean.doTest1}">

    <f:ajax execute="@form" render="internalPanel" event="click"/>

</h:commandButton>

<h:commandButton value="h_commandLink + a4j_ajax" action="#{testBean.doTest1}">

    <a4j:ajax execute="@form" render="internalPanel" event="click"/>

</h:commandButton>

But none of those variants were executing the action #{testBean.doTest1}. They only were re-rendering an element with ID internalPanel. Then I tried a4j:commandButton & a4j:commandLink in the folliwing way:

<a4j:commandLink value="a4j_commandLink"

     action="#{testBean.doTest1}"

     execute="@form"

     render="internalPanel">

</a4j:commandLink>

<a4j:commandButton value="a4j_commandButton"

     action="#{testBean.doTest1}"

     execute="@form"

     render="internalPanel">

</a4j:commandButton>

They were working fine. So I'm glad that RF 4.0 solves this problem but I only want to know if I implemented something wrong with f:ajax and a4j:ajax.

The second problem:

I tried to re-render a couple elements with ajax and one of these elements was out of the form. But I suddenly found that f:ajax didn't work with the following expression:

<f:ajax execute="@form" render=":externalPanel" event="click"/><!-- works fine -->

<f:ajax execute="@form" render="internalPanel" event="click"/><!-- works fine -->

<f:ajax execute="@form" render="internalPanel, :externalPanel" event="click"/><!--does not work -->

But at the same time a4j components were working fine:

<h:commandLink value="h_commandLink + a4j_ajax">

    <a4j:ajax execute="@form" render="internalPanel, :externalPanel" event="click">

    </a4j:ajax>

</h:commandLink>

<a4j:commandLink value="a4j_commandLink"

     action="#{testBean.doTest1}"

     execute="@form"

     render="internalPanel, :externalPanel">

</a4j:commandLink>

I also don't know why this's happening with f:ajax but I'm very glad now that I can solve some JSF 2.0 limitation by using of more convinient and powerful  RichFaces components.

Regards,

Ilya.

P.S. At the begining I decided to write this in an article or like a post in my blog but then I decided that I should discuss these problems with you and only then if these problems with JSF 2.0 are approved as existed I will convert this discussion to something bigger.

[ilya40umov]

Could someone tell me if these things are real advantages of RF or I'm missing something?

Thanks,

Ilya.

[nbelaevski]

Ilya,

For the first: can you please post full page/bean code? All examples with a4j:/f:ajax should work.

For the second: f:ajax uses white space as separator, not comma (','), so you should be using render="internalPanel :externalPanel". a4j:ajax understands both separators.

[ilya40umov]

Thank you very much. I didn't know this detail about a separator for f:ajax. Hence I suppose the second problem could be just my mistake. As for the fist part I'll post the code but it's pretty simple. There was only h:panelGroup with id internalPanel inside the form.