Creating command links dynamically from a managed bean

Question

I have a need to create command links dynamically based on content coming from elsewhere. When a user clicks on a link it should call a method in a managed bean, and the method needs to know which link was clicked.

I can create the command links using the following code:

JSF: <h:outputText value="#{myBean.dynamicLinks}" escape="false" />

Bean: public String getDynamicLinks(){ // Return an html string that contains a set of <a> elements, based on the dynamic content }

This works fine, but what I can't work out is how my <a> elements can call back into the bean.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:26

This is not the right way to "dynamically" create markup. For that you should be using XHTML, and absolutely not Java and for sure not massage some plain HTML in the model and present it with escape="false". That's plain nonsense. You're basically mingling the view into the model. You need to make the model itself dynamic, not the view. The view must be static and dumb. The view must just present the model to the world. The model itself can be dynamic. You normally achieve that by using a flexible collection, such as List<String>, List<SomeEntity>, etc which you then present using an iterator in the view such as <ui:repeat> or <h:dataTable>.

E.g.

<ui:repeat value="#{bean.links}" var="link">
    <h:commandLink value="link" action="#{bean.action(link)}" />
</ui:repeat>

public void action(Link link) {
    // ...
}

You see, the action method can know about the pressed link by just inspecting the method argument.

Creating command links dynamically from a managed bean

1 Answers1

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