Hello. Currently I am fighting with comboBox trying to make label texts appear instead of id numbers. I know comboBox is fine and it's just a bunch of inputs with only one input/output. Still I was thinking to implement converter class to temporally transform the outputs.

So let's imagine I have this in my template:

<h:outputText value="State:" />
<rich:comboBox value="#{user.idState}" id="idState" defaultLabel="put some value" required="true" converter="catalogueConverter" >
 <f:selectItems value="#{catalogue.states}" />
</rich:comboBox>

Id it possible and how could I access and list the selectItems values and labels considering that I filled them implicitly through SelectItem constructor providing with both.

public class CatalogueConverter implements Converter{

 public CatalogueConverter(){}

 @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
 public Object getAsObject(FacesContext fContext, UIComponent uic, String param){
 List<SelectItem> selectItems = (List<SelectItem>)uic.getAttributes().get("selectItems");
 Iterator<SelectItem> iterator = selectItems.iterator();
 while(iterator.hasNext()){
 SelectItem item = iterator.next();
 System.out.println("label="+item.getLabel()+", value="+item.getValue());
 }
 return (Object)param;
 }

 @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
 public String getAsString(FacesContext fContext, UIComponent uic, Object obj){
 List<SelectItem> selectItems = (List<SelectItem>)uic.getAttributes().get("selectItems");
 Iterator<SelectItem> iterator = selectItems.iterator();
 while(iterator.hasNext()){
 SelectItem item = iterator.next();
 System.out.println("label="+item.getLabel()+", value="+item.getValue());
 }
 return "sometext";
 }
}

In the last case in setAsString() selectItems is null so I get NullPointer exception in Iterator iterator = selectItems.iterator();. My conclusion is that I'm filling selectItems in a wrong way, maybe by wrong walking through the elements.

Any ideas? Or is there any other more or less automated solution to my problem?