Question

Here is my dilemma, I know in JSF the accessor method will get call mutilple times, therefore I know not to put expensive business logic (like DB access) in accessor method. What if I absolutely have to put business logic into my accessor. What should I do in this case? Below are a high level layout of my dilemma. (Mojarra 2.1, GF 3.1)

<h:dataTable value="#{myBean.comments}" var="item1">
    <h:column>
          #{item1.name} says: #{item1.comment}
          <h:dataTable value="#{myBean.handleReplies(item1)}" var="item2">
               <h:column>
                   #{item2.name} replies: #{item2.comment}
               </h:column>
          </h:dataTable>    
    </h:column>
</h:dataTable>    

@ManagedBean
@ViewScoped
public void myBean(){
    private List<Comment> comments;

    @EJB
    private MyEJB myEJB;

    @PostConstruct
    public void init(){
        comments = myEJB.getAllComments();
    }

    //getters and setters for List<Comment> comments

    public List<Comment> handleReplies(Comment comment){
         //Return a List of replies of the comment
         return myEJB.getRepliesFromComment(comment); 
    }
}

As you can see, the inner dataTable take in the item of the outer dataTable to generate its List. Is there a way for somehow stop handleReplies() to be called multiple times, since this accessor method access DB.

Answer 1

How about using a HashMap to create a view-scoped cache?

Something like:

private Map<Comment, List<Comment>> replies = new HashMap<Comment, List<Comment>>();

public List<Comment> handleReplies(Comment comment){
    if (!replies.containsKey(comment)) {
        replies.put(comment, myEJB.getRepliesFromComment(comment));
    }

    return replies.get(comment);
}

This way, your view-scoped bean store previous request results, and returns them if the request has already been done. If it hasn’t, the request is made. In the end, no duplicate request!