ADF showPrintablePageBehavior with action

Question

Hi,
I am successfully using the showPrintablePageBehavior ADF component inside a command button to render a printer-friendly version of an existing page. It is simple and works well:
<af:commandButton text="Print Me" id="cb1">
    <af:showPrintablePageBehavior/>
</af:commandButton>I understand from the documentation that adding this component to a commandButton for example supresses any server-side action event for the button:
Note that the command component will not submit an action event to the server (the event is cancelled), though there will be a request to the server to get the printable page.I have a specific use case where I would like to invoke a server-side action in addition to rendering the printable page. Let's say for example I'd like to know when a user selected the print function (to audit, or update some server-side state to indicate that the page was in fact printed).
I'm battling to implement this scenario unfortunately.
I have tried:
1. The normal "action" or "actionListener" feature of the commandButton.. true to the documentation, this doesn't work - and is not expected to work.
2. Have another button on the page to perform the server-side function. When the user clicks on this button and the server-side action has been performed, I tried to simulate a button click of a second (hidden) button on the page which contains the actual showPrintablePageBehavior component. Basically structured like this:
<af:commandButton text="Print Me" id="cb1" action="#{backingBean.myAction}">
</af:commandButton>
<af:commandButton text="Hidden print" id="cb2" visible="false">
    <af:showPrintablePageBehavior/>
</af:commandButton>From the server-side action (backingBean.myAction), I tried two ways of simulating the click of the "Hidden print" button in order to render the printable version:
1. Queue an ActionEvent from Java (hiddenPrintButton is "binding" to the bean successfully):
ActionEvent ae = new ActionEvent(hiddenPrintButton);
ae.queue();2. Inject Javascript to invoke the click of the second button:
FacesContext fctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); 
StringBuilder script = new StringBuilder(); 
script.append(String.format("var hiddenPrintButton = AdfPage.PAGE.findComponentByAbsoluteId('%s');\n", hiddenPrintButton.getClientId()));
//script.append("??");  Logic for simulating a "click"
Service.getRenderKitService(fctx,ExtendedRenderKitService.class).addScript(fctx,script.toString()); In the "Logic for simulating a click", I tried various options (ActionEvent, AdfCustomEvent), but I can't seem to successfully simulate a click.
In the Java version, the defined "action" for the hidden print button gets executed if I define one, but only that - I actually need the printing behaviour to be executed.
Am I on the right track here..? Maybe there's a much easier way to achieve what I want? I unfortunately don't have lots of ADF experience yet.
Thanks in advance for any comment or advice.

Answer 1

Frank,
Thank you so much for the pointers. I applied the concept in my case and it works like a charm.
Just to summarize (for future reference), I have the following javascript which raises a custom event:
function printInvoked(event) {
    component = event.getSource();
    AdfCustomEvent.queue(component, "printInvoked", {}, true);
}My print button looks like this. It therefore intercepts the click, call the javascript function which in turn raises a custom event. We then react to that event by calling the server-side method successfully and the printable page is also still shown as expected!
<af:commandButton text="Print Me" id="cb1">
    <af:clientListener method="printInvoked" type="click"/>
    <af:serverListener type="printInvoked"
               method="#{backingBean.myAction}"/>
    <af:showPrintablePageBehavior/>
</af:commandButton>