JSF action versus seam page action

[daxxy]

I have a search form with this button to submit the form (straight from seam-gen)

<h:commandButton value="Search" action="#{searchListener.goSearch()}" />

I also have an input on my page like this:

<h:inputText id="devName" value="#{devices.devName}" />

When I invoke this action, the devices object is created and devName is passed to searchListener.goSearch() though the value of hostname never does make it to the result page.

I am trying to push navigation onto the page.xml file for this view because I need to navigate based on whether devices.devName has a value on it. 

And as such I do this instead:

<h:commandButton value="Search" action="/Result.xhtml" />

And add an action to Result.page.xml along with the appropriate parameter kinda like this:

<param name="hostname" value="#{devices.devName}"/>
<action execute=searchListener.goSearch()">

And some navigation here based on outcome of goSearch.
In the latter example, the value of devices.devName does not get into goSearch.  A new devices object seems to be created instead.  How do I put an action into the page.xml and get it to use a parameter from that file?

TDR

[cash1981]

You should definetly don't do like that.

Read the Seam pageflow

Basically what you can do is have a method that returns a string, and based on that string you can navigate to whatever page you want. You write that in your page.xml file or pages.xml.

For instances:

<page view-id="/numberGuess.jsp">
    <navigation>
        <rule if-outcome="guess">
            <redirect view-id="/numberGuess.jsp"/>
        </rule>

        <rule if-outcome="win">
            <redirect view-id="/win.jsp"/>
        </rule>

        <rule if-outcome="lose">
            <redirect view-id="/lose.jsp"/>
        </rule>
    </navigation>
</page>

public String guess() {

    if (guess==randomNumber) return "/win.jsp";

    if (++guessCount==maxGuesses) return "/lose.jsp";

    return null;

}

[asookazian]

If you don't need to set a value in a Seam component via pages.xml (or via injection, for example), then the example above (returning /foo.xhtml from an action method) will work well strictly for navigation purposes. 

But to answer your question: How do I put an action into the page.xml and get it to use a parameter from that file?

You have a couple of options that I'm aware of.  One is using page params and the other is @RequestParameter to inject the value into your Seam component.

An example I just looked at that works for the page param approach is in the seamdvd example project.

pages.xml:

<page view-id="/dvd.xhtml" 
          action="#{search.selectFromRequest}"> 

        <param name="id" value="#{search.selectedId}"/> 

        <navigation from-action="#{search.addToCart}">
            <redirect view-id="/dvd.xhtml"/>
        </navigation>
    </page>

I added a breakpoint here:

@Stateful
@Name("search")
public class FullTextSearchAction
    implements FullTextSearch,
               Serializable
{...
   public void setSelectedId(Long id) {
        this.id = id;   //this line is executed!
    }
}

key point: setter is called prior to action method execution.

HTH