Question

I have to warn you: the question may be rather silly, but I can’t seem to wrap my head around it right now.

I have two managed beans, let’s say A and B:

class A
{
    private Date d8; // ...getters & setters
    public String search()
    {
        // search by d8
    }
}

class B
{
    private Date d9; //...getters & setters
    public String insert()
    {
         // insert a  new item for date d9
    }    
}

and then I have two JSP pages, pageA.jsp (the search page) and pageB.jsp (the input page).
What I would like to do is placing a commandbutton in pageB so to open the search page pageA passing the parameter d9 somehow, or navigating to pageA directly after b.insert(). What I would like to do is showing the search result after the insertion.

Maybe it’s just that I can’t see the clear, simple solution, but I’d like to know what the best practice might be here, also…

I though of these possible solutions:

1. including **A** in **B** and linking the command button with **b.a.search**
2. passing **d9** as a **hiddenInput** and adding a new method **searchFromB** in **A** (ugly!)
3. collapsing the two beans into one

Answer 1

You should configure the navigation flow in faces-config.xml. In ideal scenario you would return a “status” message which would decide the flow. Read more at following link:
http://www.horstmann.com/corejsf/faces-config.html
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/rtnlhelp/v6r0m0/index.jsp?topic=/com.businessobjects.integration.eclipse.doc.devtools/developer/JSF_Walkthrough8.html

As far as passing the values from one page to another is concerned you can use backing beans. More about backing beans here:
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/articles/jAstrologer-intro.html
http://www.coderanch.com/t/214065/JSF/java/backing-beans-vs-managed-beans

Hope i have understood and answered correctly to your question

Way to share values between beans

FacesContext facesContext = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
Application app = facesContext.getApplication();
ExpressionFactory elFactory = app.getExpressionFactory();
ELContext elContext = facesContext.getELContext();
ValueExpression valueExp = elFactory.createValueExpression(elContext, expression, Object.class);
return valueExp.getValue(elContext);

In above code “expression” would be something like #{xyzBean.beanProperty}
Since JSF uses singleton instances, you should be able to access the values from other beans. If you find more details on this technique, I am sure you’ll get what you are looking for.