JSF - dynamic tag choice

[Kevin McMahon]

Hi all.
I'm fairly new to JSF, and wondered if anyone might be able to give me a pointer in the right direction for this scenario...

I have a dynamic list of properties which I need to display on a page. However, the properties have a dynamic type - so for some properties I will need a checkbox to allow the user to select on/off, others will be a text input field etc. There will be a mix of types per page, but I don't know in advance how many or what type they will be, as this comes from a database.

If I were doing this in jstl, I could use something like
<c:if test="${myProperty.type == 'checkbox'}>
<input type="checkbox" ...>
</if>

or even
<input type="<c:out value="${myProperty.type"} />" ....>

Can anyone get me started on the right path to achieve a similar thing in JSF?

sheep.

[Dave Alvarado]

Could you take advantage of the input element's rendered attribute? For example, for each property output both a checkbox and a text field, but depending on your logic, the rendered attribute would evaluate to true for one and false for the other.

- Dave

[Kevin McMahon]

Yes, that's not a bad idea.

Alternatively, could I use the backing bean to create the correct UIInput types dynamically, according to the data?

For example, my backing bean can have

private UIPanel attrPanel;
private Collection<Attribute> attributes;
 
public boolean getHasAttributes() {
 return (attributes != null && attributes.size() > 0);
}
 
public UIPanel getAttrPanel() {
 return attrPanel;
}

I think I can then create the correct UIInput for each attribute in the collection, and add them as children to the UIPanel dynamically? Can I use the valueBinding methods on the UIInput to bind to my Attribute list objects?

Then, in the jsp have

<h:datatable value="#{myBackingBean.attrPanel}" var="attribute" rendered="#{myBackingBean.hasAttributes}">
</h:datatable>

I can't test this until later, but the only thing I'm not sure about it whether the data will bind back to the list element Attribute object ok?


[ November 06, 2008: Message edited by: Kevin McMahon ]