Add a column and I can't call a method

Question

I'm trying to make a small portal app with IBM RAD 6.0 but I'm having a wierd problem calling a method in my page code. Any help would be great.
Here's the cod I'm using, I've got a bunch of system.outs in it to help me track down what's happening as well as some commented code of some things I'm trying. Any why here goes:
I start a data table in the jsp like this
<h:dataTable value="#{pc_MaintainBasisFormView.memberBasisComponents}" var="results"
                         border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"
                         columnClasses="columnClass1" headerClass="headerClass"
                         footerClass="footerClass" rowClasses="rowClass1"
                         styleClass="dataTable" id="table1">
later I build these two columns
<h:column id="startdatecolumn">
                              <f:facet name="header">
                                   <h:outputText styleClass="outputText" value="Start Date" id="startdateheader" />
                              </f:facet>
                              <h:inputText styleClass="inputText" id="startdate" value="#{results.effectiveDates.effectiveStartDate}"></h:inputText>
                         </h:column>
                         <h:column id="column7">
                              <f:facet name="header">
                                   <h:outputText styleClass="outputText" value="Remove" id="remove"></h:outputText>
                              </f:facet>
                              <h:commandLink styleClass="commandLink" id="removelink" action="#{pc_MaintainBasisFormView.removeBasisComponent}">
                              <h:outputText id="text6" styleClass="outputText" value=">>"></h:outputText>
                                   <f:param name="krusty" value="#{results.id}"></f:param>
                              </h:commandLink>
                         </h:column>
so column startdate calls does this "results.effectiveDates.effectiveStartDate"
so results has this method
public EffectiveDates getEffectiveDates() {
          System.out.println("in getEffectiveDates " + effectiveDates);
          //effectiveDates = (effectiveDates == null) ? new EffectiveDates():effectiveDates;
          return effectiveDates;
and EffectiveDates has this method
public String getEffectiveStartDate() {
          System.out.println("in getEffectiveStartDate " + effectiveStartDate);
          effectiveStartDate = (effectiveStartDate == null) ? new Date() :effectiveStartDate;
          return "dfgdfG";
(it's supposed to return a date but I've set it to a string just to try to get it working)
and that all works fine.
Now the second column calls "pc_MaintainBasisFormView.removeBasisComponent" with a parameter <f:param name="krusty" value="#{results.id}">
and removeBasisComponent is defined as
     public String removeBasisComponent() {
          System.out.println("in removeBasisComponent");
          String id = getPortletRequest().getParameter("krusty");
          System.out.println("in krusty " + id);
          return "removeBasisComponent";
so whats the probelm? When I click the link in the second column, the method that it is tied to is never called. BUT, when I don't have the first column, the link works as I expect it to.
can anyone point me in the right direction to solve this problem?
Thanks in advance
JohnL

Answer 1

Hi Ruhi
I hope this answer doesn't come too late, for some reason the forum does not let me in w/ my username & password, and won't allow me to follow the "Forgot password" procedures.
Anyway:
I don't have the code but I'll try to explain the problem using the info I posted originally.
my problems start here:
<h:inputText styleClass="inputText" id="startdate" value="#{results.effectiveDates.effectiveStartDate}"></h:inputText>
It generates an input box with the value results.effectiveDates.effectiveStartDate. What I didn't know was that when I tried to submit the form from the link the application was silently failing. By silently I mean there was no error in the log, nothing, not a clue as to what the problem was.
The problem turned out to be pretty simple. When the form is generated with results.effectiveDates.effectiveStartDate
it was essentially running results.getEffectiveDates().getEffectiveStartDate() which, from my example, returned a string. That's great, no problem.
When the form is submitted it was trying to call results.getEffectiveDates().setEffectiveStartDate(), where the method setEffectiveStartDate must take a String argument, setEffectiveStartDate(String EffectiveDate). Remember that in my example I was returning a string to the from...so I needed to accept a string as an argument to the set method.
I hope this helps.