Question

How does this code in the PrimeFaces DataTable row selection work?

  <p:commandButton update=":form:display" oncomplete="confirmation.show()" image="ui-icon ui-icon-close" title="Delete">  
                 <f:setPropertyActionListener value="#{car}" target="#{tableBean.selectedCar}" />  
  </p:commandButton> 

I am confused by the following: update=”:form:display”, and image=”ui-icon ui-icon-close”.

Is this inbuilt into Primefaces? or do I need to create an additional form, or have an external image mapped to it?

Answer 1

update=”:form:display” refers to a specific element on the page. The first ‘:’ goes to the root of the page, so there needs to be a component with the id “form” (probably a form) and inside that a component with the id “display”. This means after the button actions has completed :form:display will be updated. Note that it’s generally not a great idea to use absolute paths as they can be hard to keep up to date when you change the page structure. If the button is on the same level as the “display” component you could just do update=”display”, or you can do things like update=”@form” to update the entire current form.

image=”ui-icon ui-icon-close” refers to style classes in your css. These two comes predefined with primeface, but if you want to use custom graphics you can also define your own style classes for them.