Question

I am having a problem with an ajax behavior event not being fired immediately as text is typed in a field.

If the field is a String no problem, but I am using a Date.

xhtml:

<h:outputLabel value="Date of Birth:" />
<h:inputText id="searchDOB" value="#{search.dob}" required="true">
  <f:ajax event="keyup" listener="#{search.addHyphensToDOB}" render=":output" />
  <f:convertDateTime pattern="dd-MMM-yyyy" />

bean:

Date dob;

public void addHyphensToDOB(AjaxBehaviorEvent abe) {
  System.out.println("addHyphen");
}

The event is only fired after typing the following:

22-JAN-

And fires on any number after the second hyphen, but not before.

One solution could be to change the Date type to a String, then format without using converter, but I would like to keep the Date type.

Any suggestions, thanks.

Eclipse 3.7, tomcat 7, jsf2.1,

Answer 1

It’s not fired because a conversion error has occurred due to invalid date format. The submitted value is converted everytime before the bean listener method is hit. Add a <h:message>/<h:messages> and include its ID in <f:ajax render>. You’ll then see it.

A String value of for example 2 can impossibly represent a valid Date object when parsed with the pattern dd-MMM-yyyy.

You’ll really need to keep it a String if you want to achieve the functional requirement this way. As a completely different alternative, you could consider to do it entirely at the JavaScript side without sending JSF ajax requests.