Hallo,
I posted already in the Seam forum without getting any answer yet:

I want to create a menu dynamically by reading the menu items from database. The following code sniplet works quite well, except that the Menu collapses after each click on an menu item:

<h:form>
 <rich:panelMenu mode="server" expandMode="server">
 <c:forEach items="#{appMenu.menuItems}" var="item">
 <rich:panelMenuGroup label="#{item.textValue}" >
 <c:forEach items="#{item.childs}" var="child">
 <rich:panelMenuItem submitMode="none">
 <s:link view="#{child.htmlLink}">
 <h:outputText value="#{child.textValue}"></h:outputText>
 </s:link>
 </rich:panelMenuItem>
 </c:forEach>
 </rich:panelMenuGroup>
 </c:forEach>
 </rich:panelMenu>
</h:form>

I tried several variations:

instead of <s:link> i tried

<h:outputLink value="#{child.htmlLink}">#{child.textValue}</h:outputLink>

Result was an incorrect url: http://localhost:8080/AppUserList.xhtml instead of http://localhost:8080/AdaptTemplates/AppUserList.seam?cid=109

instead of <s:link> i tried

<rich:panelMenuItem label="#{child.textValue}" value="#{child.htmlLink}" submitMode="server">

Result: Menu items get rendered as hidden input fields instead of Links to seam views.

Using <ui:repeat> or <a4j:repeat> instead of <c:forEach> did not work at all, because they were not able handle the Set collections of the underlying EntityBean:

@Entity
@Table(name = "MENU_ITEM")
public class MenuItem implements java.io.Serializable
{
 private String id;
 private MenuItem parent;
 private String viewId;
 private String textValue;
 private String htmlLink;
 private Set<MenuItem> childs = new HashSet<MenuItem>(0);
 :
 @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "parent")
 public Set<MenuItem> getChilds() {
 return this.childs;
 }

 public void setChilds(Set<MenuItem> childs) {
 this.childs = childs;
 }
}

Can somebody help?