Question

I have a page split in 3. First part is a list of links which is bound to a mBean (MLeft), and the second is the current mBean (MCenter) of the page I’m in. MCenter inserts data into MLeft so that the links from the first part are custom to the page I’m currently in. The thing is that when the page is rendered and the links are evaluated MLeft is created before MCenter (because is found earlier in the page) and MCenter doesn’t get the chance to insert the links in MLeft, so no links are displayed. I put a call to MCenter before the links using an output text referring a dummy property which is an empty string.
I don’t like this workaround, I had this problem in the past too with Seam and @Out and I solved it like this. Is there a better approach?

Answer 1

I think you need to use templates:

template.xhtml

<ui:composition>
   <h:head>
       <title>
           <ui:insert name="title" />
       </title>
       <h:outputStylesheet name="css/haleczander.css" />
   </h:head>
   <h:body>
       <div class="left">
          <ui:include src="static_links.xhtml />
          <ui:repeat value="#{links}" var="link">
              <h:outputLink value="#{link}">#{link}</h:outputLink>
          </ui:repeat>
       </div>
       <div class="center">
          <ui:insert name="content" />             
       </div>
    </h:body>
</ui:composition>

content1.xhtml

<ui:composition template="template.xhtml">
        <ui:define name="title">
             Content page 1
        </ui:define>
        <ui:param name="links" value="#{middle.links}" />
        <ui:define name="content">
             Blah blah 1
        </ui:define>
</ui:composition>   

I’m assuming links is a list or an array of strings, but you could make anything of it: a list of custom MyLink object, … (as long as there is an appropriate getter)

You could also replace middle.links with whatever you like, event a method call like #{middle.getLinks(page1)}