inital value with setBooleanButton in primefaces

Question

I'm using Primefaces and MyFaces. I would like to use the selectBooleanButton component, to control visibility of other components within a long and rather complex form.

simplified sample code:

<p:selectBooleanButton 
         onLabel="Comment" offLabel="Comment" 
         onIcon="ui-icon-check" offIcon="ui-icon-close"
         value="#{not empty myBean.comment}"
         onchange="toggleDisplay(this.checked,'myForm:commentPanel');" /> 

<h:panelGroup id="commentPanel" 
              style="display:#{empty myBean.comment ? 'none' : 'block'}">
   <p:inputTextarea value="{myBean.comment}"/>
</h:panelGroup>

The javascript in the onchange attribute simply toggles the display style from none to block and vice-versa to hide or unhide the panel group. I want/need the components to remain in the view, I do not want to use rendered attributes to remove them completely.

Where I get into trouble is because of the EL construct used in the value attribute of the setBooleanButton component. I do realize that this EL statement is not compatible with the set operation, and this results in an exception.

What I want to be able to do is when the form is loaded, have the initial status of the selectBooleanButton components set to 'on' when the comment property has some existing text it, and 'off' when it is empty. I am looking for a way to work around this that would not require me to create a property in the model for each and every instance where I want to hide the panel, as that would result in dozens and dozens of properties because my real world form is very large with many of these comment sections.

I guess this one is a real stumper. Anyone have any ideas? I'm stuck pretty good on this one. — tcprogrammer

tcprogrammer tcprogrammer · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-10T18:31:07

I also posted this question on Primefaces forum, and did not receive any answers there either, so at this time there may not be a great solution to this problem, or at least not one that has been shared. What I ended up doing to work around this is to create two versions of the component, and use the rendered attribute to control which one is used, like this:

<p:selectBooleanButton 
     onLabel="Comment" offLabel="Comment" 
     onIcon="ui-icon-check" offIcon="ui-icon-close"
     value="true" rendered="#{not empty myBean.comment}"
     onchange="toggleDisplay(this.checked,'myForm:commentPanel');" /> 

<p:selectBooleanButton 
     onLabel="Comment" offLabel="Comment" 
     onIcon="ui-icon-check" offIcon="ui-icon-close"
     value="false" rendered="#{empty myBean.comment}"
     onchange="toggleDisplay(this.checked,'myForm:commentPanel');" />

inital value with setBooleanButton in primefaces

1 Answers