keeping track on previous page viewed

[kevcpu411]

Does seam offer a way to keep track of the page a person came from?  For example, suppose I have three pages; x.seam, y.seam and z.seam.  A person visits y.seam followed by z.seam then x.seam.  I would like each page to be aware of the last page a person visits, i.e. I want x.seam to know the last page was z.seam.

[kipod]

I would also like to know the answer to your question.

I have a products search page with page parameters. After the user searches, and clicks on a product, he is taken to that product's details page.

I would like to offer the user a back button that will redirect him back to the search page WITH the previously entered search parameters showing.

Actually - the user can reach the product details page from many locations in the app, so where ever he came from I want to go back there and show whatever state was present before (the state was the previous page's URL parameters)

From Dan Allen's Seam-in-Action book, I see anonymous page parameters may help, such as

<page id="/productDetails.xhtml">
   <param name="productId" value="#{productHome.id}" converterId="javax.faces.Long" />
   <param name="returnTo"/>
</page>

One thing I don't get from the book, and I guess it is implied there is:

When we have a link to the productDetails page, such as:

<s:link id="productName"
   value="#{_prd.name}"
   view="/productDetails.xhtml">
   <f:param name="productId" value="#{_prd.id}"/>
</s:link>

We also have to manually specify an f:param for the returnTo ???
Meaning, if I really wanna go back to the search page the user was on, I need to specify ALL the search page parameters in a link that actually leads to the product details page ??

[swd847]

I have a solution that works within conversations that keeps track of the order that pages were viewed in the conversation:

pages.xml

<page action="#{pageViewStack.push}" login-required="true"
                view-id="/app/*">
<page view-id="/parent.xhtml">
                <action execute="#{pageViewStack.pop}" />
</page>

PageViewStack:

@Name("pageViewStack")
@Scope(ScopeType.CONVERSATION)
@AutoCreate
public class PageViewStack implements Serializable
{

    public PageViewStack()
    {
        views = new Stack<String>();
    }

    public void push()
    {
        String a = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getViewRoot().getViewId();
        if (a == null)
        {
            return;
        }
        if (views.empty() || !views.peek().equals(a))
        {
            views.push(a);
        }
    }

    /*
     * This pops the top item and then returns the next item This is because the
     * top item is always the active page, and we will be trying to move the the
     * active pages parent
     */
    public String pop()
    {
        if (views.size() > 1)
        {
            views.pop();

        }
        if (views.size() > 0)
            return views.peek();
        return "";
    }

    Stack<String> views;

    public int getCount()
    {
        return views.size();
    }

    @Override
    public String toString()
    {
        StringBuilder db = new StringBuilder();
        for (String s : views)
        {
            db.append(s + ":");

        }
        return db.toString();
    }
}

To go back in the conversation I just redirect to /parent.xhtml.

This may not be what you are after if you are not using conversations.