Differentiate between buttons without action in pages.xml

[thekonstantin]

Hi @ all!

It is possible to define a button/link in an JSF page, which has no informations about his action/pageflow? I want to define the action and the pageflow only inside the pages.xml.

I've defined two buttons like this:

<h:commandButton id="viewButton" value="Click here to View the current entity."/>
<h:commandButton id="editButton" value="Click here to edit the current entity."/>

But I've no idea how I can differentiate between the two buttons in pages.xml, because I know only the differentiate between from-action, if-outcome, and if.

I want to have something like this:

<page view-id="/mypage.xhtml">
   <navigation>
      <rule> <!-- for view button -->
         <action execute="#{mySessionBean.doSomethingForView()}" />
         <redirect view-id="/viewpage.xhtml"/>
      </rule>

      <rule> <!-- for edit button -->
         <action execute="#{mySessionBean.doSomethingForEdit()}" />
         <action execute="#{mySessionBean.doAnotherForEdit()}" />
         <redirect view-id="/editpage.xhtml"/>
      </rule>
   </navigation>
</page>

It is possible or do I have to specify an (empty) action for each button?

Cornelius

[dan.j.allen]

You can distinguish between the two buttons by assigning a logical outcome to each one:

<h:commandButton id="viewButton" action="view" value="Click here to View the current entity."/>
<h:commandButton id="editButton" action="edit" value="Click here to edit the current entity."/>

Then you can refer to these outcomes in your navigation rules:

<page view-id="/mypage.xhtml">
   <navigation>
      <rule if-outcome="view">
         <redirect view-id="/viewpage.xhtml"/>
      </rule>

      <rule if-outcome="edit">
         <redirect view-id="/editpage.xhtml"/>
      </rule>
   </navigation>
</page>

However, you cannot execute actions inside of rules. The best you can do is raise an event which an observer will observe and execute logic.