Obtaining the clientId of the parent of a JSF2 composite component

Question

I've got the following code:

<h:dataTable id="dt" value="#{somelist}" var="entry">
    <h:column>
        #{entry.title}
    </h:column>
    <h:column>
        <h:commandLink id="lnk">
           <mycomp:doSomething id="dummy" />
        </h:commandLink>
    </h:column>
</h:dataTable>

My composite component (mycomp:doSomething) looks like this:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html
    xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
    xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
    xmlns:composite="http://java.sun.com/jsf/composite">

    <composite:interface>
    </composite:interface>

    <composite:implementation >     
        <script type="text/javascript">
            // #{component.parent.clientId}
        </script>        
    </composite:implementation>
</html>

I would expect the output (#{component.parent.clientId}) to be something similar to this: dt:0:lnk but instead it returns dt:0:dummy i.e. the client ID of the composite component.

How do I get the ID of the real parent tag?

lu4242 lu4242 · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-18T17:18:33

Use #{cc.parent.clientId} instead. All content inside composite:implementation is inside a UIPanel that is on a facelet inside the composite component base instance, which usually is a NamingContainer.

UPDATE: Checking the code, cc.parent resolves the parent composite component instead of the immediate parent. It seems to be an old implementation detail, but it is not mentioned in the spec. The solution proposed in this answer does not work :(.

See http://lists.jboss.org/pipermail/jsr-314-open-mirror/2010-February/002474.html

You can bypass the resolution of cc.parent, providing a custom component class extending UINamingContainer and adding this:

<composite:interface componentType="my.custom.ComponentBaseClass">

then add a getter like

public UIComponent getImmediateParent()
{
     return getParent();
}

and finally use #{cc.immediateParent.clientId}. It should work in this way.

Obtaining the clientId of the parent of a JSF2 composite component

1 Answers