Question

I am quite confused with the view scope. I thought it could survive a JSF navigation to another page (no redirect, obviously), but it doesn’t. So what’s the advantage to use it instead of request scope, that if i summoned the same view it will be the same object?

Answer 1

The advantage is that the bean survives postbacks to the same view. You don’t need to preserve any data yourself anymore when used in rendered attributes or as model for h:dataTable or as hidden inputs, etcetera. In the past, a lot of hacks were been used to go around this.

A view scoped bean lives as long as you interact with the same view (i.e. you return void or null in bean action method). When you navigate away to another view, e.g. by clicking a link or by returning a different action outcome, then the view scoped bean will be trashed by end of render response and not be available in the next request.

See also:

• Benefits and pitfalls of @ViewScoped
• Any disadvantages of JSF 2.0?