Hi Folks.

After several days trying to found a reason to the problem I will describe here I gave up.

Maybe someone here had a similar problem or can see WTF I'm doing wrong.

I have a seam application and I'm using Ajax4JSF to perform some validations using a4j:support. I took as base the booking example of seam.

The problem is when I try to edit a simple entity in a conversation, the entity is a User entity (username, firstname, lastname) and this entity has a @ManyToMany relationship with a Role entity, this relationship is displayed as checkboxes in the page and here I'm using s:convertEntity to make this work. All works fine without a4j:support in the input fields. But, when I add the a4j:support to some field, then the entity is persited in the database every time a a4j request is done (a4j:support onblur). This means every time I press the tab key in the form page I can see something like this in the server console:

Hibernate: update users set password=?, firstname=?, lastname=?, email=?, version=?, country=?, city=?, province=?, street=
?, enabled=? where username=? and version=?
Hibernate: update users set password=?, firstname=?, lastname=?, email=?, version=?, country=?, city=?, province=?, street=
?, enabled=? where username=? and version=?
Hibernate: update users set password=?, firstname=?, lastname=?, email=?, version=?, country=?, city=?, province=?, street=
?, enabled=? where username=? and version=?
Hibernate: update users set password=?, firstname=?, lastname=?, email=?, version=?, country=?, city=?, province=?, street=
?, enabled=? where username=? and version=?
Hibernate: update users set password=?, firstname=?, lastname=?, email=?, version=?, country=?, city=?, province=?, street=
?, enabled=? where username=? and version=?
Hibernate: update users set password=?, firstname=?, lastname=?, email=?, version=?, country=?, city=?, province=?, street=

But, I did not press any button or submit the form, and even the action (seam component) is never called.


Here is my code:

User entity:

@Entity
@Table(name = "users")
@Name("user")
public class User implements Serializable {

 private static final long serialVersionUID = 1559233654671826129L;

 @Id
 @Column(name = "username")
 @Length(max = 50)
 @NotNull
 private String username;

 @Column(name = "password", nullable = false)
 @Length(min = 6, max = 200)
 @NotNull
 private String password;


 @Column(name = "firstname", nullable = false)
 @NotNull
 @Length(max = 80)
 private String firstName;

 @Column(name = "lastname", nullable = false)
 @NotNull
 @Length(max = 80)
 private String lastName;



 @Version
 @Column(name = "version")
 private long version;
...


 @ManyToMany(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
 @JoinTable(
 name = "userrole",
 joinColumns = @JoinColumn(name = "username"),
 inverseJoinColumns = @JoinColumn(name = "name")
 )
 @OrderBy("name asc")
 private List<Role> roles;
....

Edit xhtml page:

<ui:define name="body">
 <h:form id="userForm">
 <h:commandButton action="#{userAction.update}" value="#{messages['Common.save']}"
 styleClass="button" />


<a4j:commandButton action="#{userAction.cancel}" value="#{messages['Common.cancel']}"
 styleClass="button" immediate="true"/>
 </div>

 <rich:panel id="formPanel">
 <f:facet name="header">#{messages['User.edit']}</f:facet>

 <s:decorate id="usernameDecorate" template="/include/viewField.xhtml">
 <ui:define name="label">#{messages['User.username']}</ui:define>
 #{user.username}
 </s:decorate>


 <s:decorate id="firstNameDecorate" template="/include/inputField.xhtml">
 <ui:define name="label">#{messages['User.firstName']}</ui:define>

 <h:inputText id="firstName" value="#{user.firstName}" required="true"
 maxlength="80" tabindex="4" styleClass="input">
 <a4j:support event="onblur" reRender="firstNameDecorate"/>
 </h:inputText>

 </s:decorate>


 <s:decorate id="lastNameDecorate" template="/include/inputField.xhtml">
 <ui:define name="label">#{messages['User.lastName']}</ui:define>

 <h:inputText id="lastName" value="#{user.lastName}" required="true"
 maxlength="80" tabindex="5" styleClass="input">
 <a4j:support event="onblur" reRender="lastNameDecorate"/>
 </h:inputText>

 </s:decorate>

 //If I remove below field, all works fine
 <s:decorate template="/include/inputField.xhtml">
 <ui:define name="label">#{messages['User.assignRoles']}</ui:define>
 <h:selectManyCheckbox value="#{user.roles}" id="userRoles" tabindex="13" styleClass="checkBox">
 <s:selectItems value="#{roleList}" var="role" label="#{messages[role.description]}"/>
 <s:convertEntity/>
 </h:selectManyCheckbox>
 </s:decorate>

 </rich:panel>


 </h:form>

User action component

@Stateful
@Name("userAction")
@Scope(ScopeType.CONVERSATION)
@Restrict("#{s:hasRole('admin')}")
public class UserAction implements Serializable, IUserAction {

 private static final long serialVersionUID = -8072889837049283608L;



 @In
 private EntityManager entityManager;

 @In(required = false)
 @Out(required = false)
 private User user;

 @In
 private FacesMessages facesMessages;



 @Begin(ifOutcome = "userEdit")
 public String select(User selectedUser) {
 log.debug("selecting user");
 try {

 user = entityManager.find(User.class, selectedUser.getUsername());

 user.setConfirmPassword(user.getPassword());
 setOriginalPassword(user.getPassword());
 return "userEdit";

 } catch (EntityNotFoundException e) {
 facesMessages.addFromResourceBundle(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_INFO,
 "Common.error.notFound", selectedUser.getFullName());
 return "userList";
 }
 }



 @End
 public String update() {
 try {
 entityManager.merge(user);

 } catch (OptimisticLockException e) {
 user = currentUser;
 facesMessages.addFromResourceBundle(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_ERROR, "Common.error.concurrency");
 return null;
 }
 facesMessages.addFromResourceBundle(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_INFO,
 "Common.message.updated", user.getFullName());

 return "userList";
 }


 @End
 public String cancel() {
 return "userList";
 }

Maybe you are thinking that this post should be done in Ajax4JSF forum, but I'm not sure about this, because it seems like a em.merge() is done, but I don't know by whom. Anyway I hope you can give some hints in order to solve this problem.


Thanks in advance.