Question

In my case I want to refresh the component with ID baseTab. It is itself contained if form main and tabView tabs. The absolute reference to the component is main:tabs:baseTab. and this is what I need to refer to for example in update attribute:

 <p:commandButton update="main:tabs:baseTab"/>

The problem with such full ID is that it is long and can be easily change when I change something in component hierarchy. The ID baseTab is itself unique so I should be, at least theoretically, able to refer this component direcly. But how I can do that?

What is the syntax to refer the component via unique ID? I’ve tried the following:

• :baseTab
• baseTab
• main:baseTab
• :tabs:baseTab

And none of that was working, each was causing the page error that such component does not exist….

Answer 1

I can see the value in not making this reference depend on the component tree structure.

It should be possible to leverage the component binding for this because update can take a ValueExpression.

Define a map in request scope using (for example) a faces-config.xml:

<managed-bean>
  <managed-bean-name>bind</managed-bean-name>
  <managed-bean-class>java.util.HashMap</managed-bean-class>
  <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
</managed-bean>

Bind the target to the map:

<h:foo binding="#{bind.someIdForBinding}" />

Reference this control’s client identifier in your button:

<p:commandButton update=":#{bind.someIdForBinding.clientId}"/>

The target component will be put into the binding map when the tree is created/restored.

Note that this code is untested.