Question

I have an ICEfaces web app which contains a component with a property linked to a backing bean variable. In theory, variable value is programmatically modified, and the component sees the change and updates its appearance/properties accordingly.

However, it seems that the change in variable isn’t “noticed” by the component until the end of the JSF cycle (which, from my basic understanding, is the render response phase).

The problem is, I have a long file-copy operation to perform, and I would like the the inputText component to show a periodic status update. However, since the component is only updated at the render response phase, it doesn’t show any output until the Java methods have finished executing, and it shows it all changes accumulated at once.

I have tried using FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().renderResponse() and other functions, such as PushRenderer.render(String ID) to force XmlHttpRequest to initialize early, but no matter what, the appearance of the component does not change until the Java code finishes executing.

One possible solution that comes to mind is to have an invisible button somewhere that is automatically “pressed” by the bean when step 1 of the long operation completes, and by clicking it, it calls step 2, and so on and so forth. It seems like it would work, but I don’t want to spend time hacking together such an inelegant solution when I would hope that there is a more elegant solution built into JSF/ICEfaces.

Am I missing something, or is resorting to ugly hacks the only way to achieve the desired behavior?

Answer 1

Multithreading was the missing link, in conjunction with PushRenderer and PortableRenderer (see http://wiki.icesoft.org/display/ICE/Ajax+Push+-+APIs).

I now have three threads in my backing bean- one for executing the long operation, one for polling the status, and one “main” thread for spawning the new threads and returning UI control to the client browser.

Once the main thread kicks off both execution and polling threads, it terminates and it completes the original HTTP request. My PortableRenderer is declared as PortableRender portableRenderer; and in my init() method (called by the class constructor) contains:

PushRenderer.addCurrentSession("fullFormGroup");    
portableRenderer = PushRenderer.getPortableRenderer();

For the threading part, I used implements Runnable on my class, and for handling multiple threads in a single class, I followed this StackOverflow post: How to deal with multiple threads in one class?

Here’s some source code. I can’t reveal the explicit source code I’ve used, but this is a boiled-down version that doesn’t reveal any confidential information. I haven’t tested it, and I wrote it in gedit so it might have a syntax error or two, but it should at least get you started in the right direction.

public void init()
{
    // This method is called by the constructor.
    // It doesn't matter where you define the PortableRenderer, as long as it's before it's used.
    PushRenderer.addCurrentSession("fullFormGroup");
    portableRenderer = PushRenderer.getPortableRenderer();
}   


public void someBeanMethod(ActionEvent evt)
{
    // This is a backing bean method called by some UI event (e.g. clicking a button)
    // Since it is part of a JSF/HTTP request, you cannot call portableRenderer.render

    copyExecuting = true;

    // Create a status thread and start it

    Thread statusThread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
        public void run() {
        try {
                        // message and progress are both linked to components, which change on a portableRenderer.render("fullFormGroup") call
            message = "Copying...";
            // initiates render. Note that this cannot be called from a thread which is already part of an HTTP request
            portableRenderer.render("fullFormGroup"); 
            do {
                progress = getProgress();
                portableRenderer.render("fullFormGroup"); // render the updated progress
                Thread.sleep(5000); // sleep for a while until it's time to poll again
            } while (copyExecuting);
            progress = getProgress();
            message = "Finished!";
            portableRenderer.render("fullFormGroup"); // push a render one last time
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            System.out.println("Child interrupted.");
        }
    });
    statusThread.start();

    // create a thread which initiates script and triggers the termination of statusThread
    Thread copyThread = new Thread(new Runnable() {           
        public void run() {
        File someBigFile = new File("/tmp/foobar/large_file.tar.gz");
            scriptResult = copyFile(someBigFile); // this will take a long time, which is why we spawn a new thread
            copyExecuting = false; // this will caue the statusThread's do..while loop to terminate


        } 
    });
    copyThread.start();
}