Question

I’ve created an address bean and I want to use it twice – once for street address and once for mailing address. I can achieve this using faces config as per the below, but I’m wondering if I can do this via annotations.

e.g. put @ManagedBean(name=”StreetAddress”) and @ManagedBean(name=”MailingAddress”) on the same class? I feel like I am missing something obvious here but I’m not sure what.

<managed-bean>
    <managed-bean-name>MailingAddress</managed-bean-name>
    <managed-bean-class>com.leetb.jsf_ex1.model.AddressBean</managed-bean-class>
    <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>
    <map-entries/>
</managed-bean>
<managed-bean>
    <managed-bean-name>StreetAddress</managed-bean-name>
    <managed-bean-class>com.leetb.jsf_ex1.model.AddressBean</managed-bean-class>
    <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>
    <map-entries/>
</managed-bean>

public class AddressBean {

    private String line_one;
    private String line_two;
    private String suburb;
    private String state;
    private String postcode;

/* getters and setters snipped */
}

Answer 1

You’ve there a design mistake. Those look more like model classes than backing bean classes. Model classes shouldn’t be managed beans at all. Make them a property of a backing bean class and manage it instead.

E.g.

@ManagedBean
@ViewScoped
public class AddressBacking {

    private AddressBean mailingAddress;
    private AddressBean streetAddress;

    @PostConstruct
    public void init() {
        // Prepare them here yourself. For example, when it's for a new entry.
        mailingAddress = new AddressBean();
        streetAddress = new AddressBean();
    }

    public void save() {
        // ...
    }

    // ...
}

(I’d rename AddressBean to Address by the way)

and use it as follows

<h:inputText value="#{addressBacking.mailingAddress.line_one}" />
...
<h:inputText value="#{addressBacking.streetAddress.line_one}" />
...