When to use :(colon) in rendering in jsf components

Question

i have read that, we should use :(colon) to render components in other form. but in my case

<h:form id="form">
    <p:growl id="messages"></p:growl>
    <p:dataTable var="e" value="#{employees.eList}" id="elist1"
        editable="true">
        <f:facet name="header">
        In-Cell Editing
    </f:facet>
        <p:ajax event="rowEdit" listener="#{employees.onEdit}" update=":form:messages"/>

        <p:ajax event="rowEditCancel" listener="#{employees.onCancel}" />

        <p:column headerText="name" style="width:30%">
            <p:cellEditor>
                <f:facet name="output">
                    <h:outputText value="#{e.name}" />
                </f:facet>
                <f:facet name="input">
                    <h:inputText value="#{e.name}" style="width:100%" />
                </f:facet>
            </p:cellEditor>
        </p:column>
..........   ...........
</p:datatable>

i want to update messages(growl) from datatable component why i have to use colon update=":form:messages"

score 15 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

All relative client IDs (the ones not starting with :) are searched relative to the parent component which implements the NamingContainer interface. As you can see in the linked javadoc, that are at least all UIForm and UIData components. The <h:form> is such one. The <p:dataTable> is another one.

In your particular case, the <p:ajax> is enclosed in <p:dataTable>. So, the <p:ajax update="messages"> would look for a child component with ID messages inside the context of <p:dataTable>. However, since there is none, it won't find anything. You actually need to use an absolute client ID instead because it's outside the context of the current NamingContainer parent.

When to use :(colon) in rendering in jsf components

1 Answers1

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