<h:form> within <ui:repeat> not entirely working, only the last <h:form> is processed

Question

I will like to edit a list of items in the same page. Each item should be edited using a separate form. I am creating a h:form within ui:repeat. Only when the last form is submitted, the user input is applied to the managed bean. For all other forms, user input is not applied to the model.

@ManagedBean
public class Controller {
    Logger logger = Logger.getLogger("TestWeb");
    private List<Customer> customerList;

    public List<Customer> getCustomerList() {
        if (customerList == null) {
            customerList = new ArrayList<Customer>();
            customerList.add(new Customer("Daffy Duck", "[email protected]"));                          
            customerList.add(new Customer("Bugs Bunny", "[email protected]"));       
            customerList.add(new Customer("Samity Sam", "[email protected]"));
        }
        return customerList;
    }
    public String updateCustomer(Customer c) {
        logger.info("Updating: " + c.getName());
        return null;
    }
}

In the view, I have

<ui:repeat var="c" value="#{controller.customerList}">
<h:form>
  <h3>Edit Customer</h3>
  Name: <h:inputText value="#{c.name}"/><br/>
  E-mail: <h:inputText value="#{c.email}"/><br/>
  <h:commandButton value="Update"
    action="#{controller.updateCustomer(c)}"/>
</h:form>
</ui:repeat>

I search for hours without any solution. What will be the correct way to do this? I can hack it by using a single form and using a ui:repeat within it. But there are many issues with that and I will rather not take that route. Thanks.

You can achieve this by wrapping only the <h:commandButton/> with the <h:form/>. — kolossus
@kolossus, are you sure? I tried wrapping the command button in a form. That didn't solve the problem. — RajV
Oh? In retrospect, that figures, as at the time that the markup is being rendered, the argument you're supplying to the updateCustomer method would've been set to the last value. You should just supply the selected value to the backing bean using an <f:param/> instead, maybe passing just the id of the entity. I've used this before so I'm sure it works. Be advised though, it poses a security risk passing an Id back and forth like so. You might want to secure the parameter somehow — kolossus

BalusC BalusC · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-10T17:04:18

This is a bug in state saving of <ui:repeat> in Mojarra. There are several similar issue reports at http://java.net/jira/browse/JAVASERVERFACES, among others issue 2243.

You have basically 2 options: use another iterating component (e.g. <c:forEach>, <h:dataTable>, <t:dataList>, <p:dataList>, etc), or replace Mojarra by MyFaces (the <ui:repeat> in this construct works properly in there).

<h:form> within <ui:repeat> not entirely working, only the last <h:form> is processed

1 Answers