Mixing JSF and jstl

[E Paisley]

Please Help.

I'm trying to build a page with JSF and use a datatable to display information. One the columns (called category) is a requestLink to another page. Depending on the String value of category determines whether it is a link or not.

I'm trying to use the JSTL core if statements to print the link or just the text, but it seems like the core code only exectues once. Any suggestions?

  
<hx:dataTableEx id="tableEx2"
value="#{pc_BottomLineWho.bottomLineExpandedSummary}"
var="varbottomLineExpandedSummary" styleClass="dataTableEx"
headerClass="headerClass" footerClass="footerClass"
rowClasses="rowClass1, rowClass2" columnClasses="columnClass1"
border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

     <hx:columnEx id="columnEx1">
<f:facet name="header">
<h:outputText styleClass="outputText"
value="#{pc_BottomLineWho.nameofDisplayedRep}" id="text1">  
                </h:outputText>
</f:facet>
<c:if test="${varbottomLineExpandedSummary.category eq 'nolink'}>
<h:outputText id="textCategory1NoLink"
value="#{varbottomLineExpandedSummary.category}"
styleClass="outputText">
</h:outputText>
</c:if>
<c:if test="${varbottomLineExpandedSummary.category eq 'link'}>
<hx:requestLink id="link3" styleClass="requestLink"
action="#{pc_BottomLineWho.doLink3Action1}">
<h:outputText id="textCategory1"
value="#{varbottomLineExpandedSummary.category}"
styleClass="outputText">
</h:outputText>
<f:param name="categoryId" id="param1"
value="#{varbottomLineExpandedSummary.category}"></f:param>
</hx:requestLink>
</c:if>

</hx:columnEx>
 
  

varbottomLineExpandedSummary is the backingBean that is used to generate the datatable. Any suggestions or pushes in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

[Tim Holloway]

JSTL and JSF don't mix all that well. A cleaner approach is to define the item as both an output text and a link text and use the "rendered" attribute to select which one to display.

Of course, since "rendered" normally accesses a property on the backing bean, this has the side effect of encouraging you not to put logic on the View, and therefore nudges you more towards a true MVC approach than JSTL would.