How to pass inputText value as querystring in JSF form

Question

I would like to implement a search box in my web-app. A JSF <h:form> should redirect me to products.xhtml?search=somestring. It should work the same as the following piece of HTML:

<form action="products.xhtml" method="GET">
  <input type="text" name="search" />
  <input type="submit" value="Submit"  />
</form>

All the solutions of similar problems I came across does the redirection to another page without querystring

<h:form>
  <h:inputText value="#{product.searchString}"/>
  <h:commandButton value="Submit" action="products?faces-redirect=true&amp;includeViewParams=true"/>
</h:form>

.

<h:form>
    <h:inputText valueChangeListener="#{product.searchStringChanged}" />
    <h:link value="Submit"  outcome="products">
        <f:param name="search" value="#{product.searchString}" />
    </h:link>
</h:form>

OR builds the querystring but redirects to the same page. The reason of not using pure HTML is to keep the benefits of the JSF session management.

EDIT

With the help of BalusC's post and https://blogs.oracle.com/enterprisetechtips/entry/post_redirect_get_and_jsf, I came up with following solution:

<f:metadata>
  <f:viewParam name="search" value="#{product.search}" />       
</f:metadata> 

<h:form>
  <h:inputText value="${product.search}"/>
  <h:commandLink action="products?faces-redirect=true&amp;includeViewParams=true" value="Search"/>
</h:form>

*"The reason of not using pure HTML is to keep the benefits of the JSF session management."* I have no idea what you mean. The session management can absolutely not be different as it's not controlled by JSF at all, but by the servlet container. Please elaborate the concrete functional requirement in detail. Don't you mean the view state? What benefits exactly are you talking about which you'd like to utilize in plain HTML? — BalusC, Dec 31 '12 at 11:35
Thanx for your reaction! So even if I use regular html tags (like `` and `
`), the container will still add session attributes? The benefit I would like implemented is the `method="GET"` in the form (as JSF doesn't allow you to use the `method` attribute and automaticaly transforms it into a POST) I need a search box that, when used, redirects you to products.xhtml?search=_searchstring_. If have created a way around using `` but that's not the proper way I suppose! — Lorenzo G, Jan 05 '13 at 03:00
What exactly do you mean with "session attributes"? What exactly are you trying to store/retrieve in session? I'm not sure how the session could ever play an important role in an idempotent GET request. Are you relying on the logged-in user or something? As to using a plain HTML GET form in JSF, I'm also not exactly sure why you feel forced to use `` and/or ``. You can just use plain HTML `
` and `` in JSF and set request parameters as bean properties by ``. See also the bottommost example of http://stackoverflow.com/a/6377957 — BalusC, Jan 05 '13 at 03:03
I will try to explain it otherwise, considering following: (i) A user is logged in (using a SessionScoped UserBean), (ii) His browser has cookies disabled. Knowing this, and using h-tags, the container will append a jsessionid to every link or form-action. When using a regular `
`, the view will be rendered without adding the jsessionid in the form-action. So if I use a regular html-form, the container will not be passed a jsessionid and thus the user will be logged out. Saying this, I'm a bit forced to use JSF-tags in order to keep this user logged in (I guess?). — Lorenzo G, Jan 05 '13 at 05:27
Now I want the value of the ``to be processed as a querystring, in order to make the searchresult bookmarkable. (My excuses if I'm too vague, I have just started learning JSF) — Lorenzo G, Jan 05 '13 at 05:29

How to pass inputText value as querystring in JSF form

0 Answers0