rich:autocomplete issues
We are upgrading from jsf 1.2 to jsf 2.
We are using apache myfaces 2.1 and rich faces 4.3.
We are facing very strange issue with <rich:autocomplete>. Below is the xhtml code.
<rich:autocomplete mode="cachedAjax" minChars="2" autocompleteMethod="#{bean.getData}"
var="result" value="#{bean.inputData}">
<h:column>
<h:outputText value="#{result}" />
</h:column>
</rich:autocomple
te>
The above autoComplete component gets included through ui include tag as below
<ui:include src="panel1.xhtml">
<ui:param name="bean" value="#{userBean}"/>
</ui:include>
Following is the scenario , when an input is entered in an autocomplete input box , suggetions are shown - that is bean.getData method is called.
Surprisingly , after any of the suggestion is selected , bean.getData method is called again with chosen option value , which I believe is not the correct behaviour
since user has selected an option and not typed any input.
I don't want the bean.getData method to be called again. Is there any alternative ?
In addition to above issue , it seems that there is no "nothing label" attribute for rich:autocomplete which was present for rich:suggestionBox which comes into picture when there is no result found.
This issue alongwith above issue is really making a difficult job to get this component working same as rich:suggestionBox
I understand that once prefix for search is changed , suggestions are evaluated again ,but here i am not changing the prefix but selecting the entire suggestion value.
Following is the detailed code for the issue
When autoCompleted method is called , it populates a hashMap with all the suggestions with CustomUserObject as the value.
Below is the code for this :
public List<String> getData(FacesContext context, UIComponent component, String input) {
Map<String, CustomUserObject> userMap = new HashMap<String, CustomUserObject>();
//get users from db
List<CustomUserObject> users = bean.fetchUserList(input);
//put users in map
for (CustomUserObject user : users) {
userMap.put(user.id, user) ;
}
List<String> userList = new ArrayList<String>();
//convert the list to List<String>
if(userList != null && !userList.isEmpty()){
//convert the List<CustomUserObject> to List<String>
}
return userList;
}
Now because of the issue mentioned in the question , getData is called again and corrupts userMap.
This map is used to retrieve correct CustomUserObject by comparing it with selected Suggestion like below :
if(userMap != null && !userMap.isEmpty()){
for(CustomUserObject user : userMap.values()){
if(selectedSuggestion != null && selectedSuggestion.equals(user.name)){
//match is found
//set variables to update ui at re-render
}
//no match found
//set variables to update ui at re-render
}
}
