Newbie question, please clarify: Conversation Propagation with ajax?

[regenbahn]

Hello,

after reading Seam / Richfaces docs and Seam in Action MEAP, I learned a thing about conversations, but I'm still a bit puzzled.

Please clarify if I'm right with the following:

With a richfaces components like

<rich:comboBox selectFirstOnUpdate="false"
        defaultLabel="Enter some value">
        <f:selectItems value="#{myConvComp.options}" />
</rich:comboBox>

I can't put @Begin on getOptions() getter at the conversation scoped myConvComp component to start a new conversation on every select change, because only method level @Begin or @End annototaions are allowed, right?

But what about <a4j:commandLink>? Conversation change (Ending current, starting nested etc.) is happening in JSF Redirect to new page (or even same page), according to this forum topic.

But I don't want to do a full page refresh, just a partial ajax update. Is there a way to start and end nested conversations without full refresh? What about conversationPropagation parameter including in <a4j:commandLink>? When there is no redirect it would be useless, or not?

Use case would be like that: build up complex search form and start /end nested conversations for last 2 search options.

Is this possibly with plain Richfaces or do I need to use <s:link> with redirects in pages.xml and full page refresh?

Any comments, suggestions or examples about similar usage are appreciated, thanks.

Regen

[chris.simons]

Good question - you do not want/need any conversation scoping on your bean for rendering the select item options.  The conversation deals with page transitions - not loading data from a bean.

What you're looking for should be really simple. 

Within your <rich:comboBox> you want to use an <a4j:support> that reRenders some component(s) on the 'onChange' event.

Here is an example when using an h:selectOneListBox:

<h:selectOneListbox partialSubmit="true" id="documentType" required="true"
                                                                size="1" value="#{cvIdent.documentType}">
<a4j:support event="onchange" ajaxSingle="true" reRender="createIdentForm"/>              
                                                        <s:selectItems var="value" label="#{value.name}"
                                                                value="#{valueManager.values['Document Type']}" 
                                                                noSelectionLabel="-- Click to View Options --"/>
                                                        <s:convertEntity />
                                                </h:selectOneListbox>