Apply request values from a region on an event from another region

Question

Hi,
I am quite new to ADF and that's my first question/post here (and as a matter of fact pretty much anywhere),
so i hope i manage to make my problem clear enough.
First i am using ADF Faces + ADF BC using JDeveloper 11.1.2.1.0 with the integrated WebLogic Server
Now the what is the case:
I have a page with two af:regions in it.
The first one is basically a single selection table.
The second one is a to put is simply an edit form for the selected row of the first table.
I don't use the contextual events mechanism ( i have spent some week or more playing around with it awhile ago, but from that exprience i don't recollect any particular thing that might solve my problem) so what i do is pass as parameter to the first(table) region a "delegate" that would listen/handle selection events and in the backing bean of the table i have the selection listener that fires the events/calls the delegate's handleEvent(String eventType,Object data) method so that the main page knows and refreshes the second/edit form region
with the newly selected ID of the entity.
My problem is that if i had entered data in the form in the second region it is lost after selection
has been made in the first one.
I see (in the http request content of the selection event, or in the requestMap), that all that was in the html page, including the second region is transmitted to the server - so are the newly entered values. However the jsf components that are a part of the second region are not applied with their new values, nor their model is updated in the next jsf phase.
Now I suspect that has something to do with the (Adf)RichRegion being a EventRoot or something.
I tried putting partialTrigger to the second region (though i currently and for various reasons call the AdfFacesContext.addPartialTarget programmatically at about one million places in the java code after the selection event)
I even tried hacking the javascript AdfRichRegion object, so that it would always return false if asked isEventRoot. :) that's how desperate i was
The only solution i have so far is:
First to make clear. When i say refreshing the second region i don't mean calling RichRegion.refresh(), but rather RichRegion.queueActionEventInRegion(....., "refresh",PhaseId.ANY_PHASE) which in the second's region taskflow is just a method call, that sets the right current row of the iterator and then loops back to the same (one and only view in this taskflow - the edit form) and adds some parialTargets to the AdfFacesContext, so we see the new data
then in that methodCall (which i think happens in the INVOKE_APPLICATION phase) i add those few lines to make sure the values are applied to the jsf components sub-tree of interest:
RichPanelGroupLayout fl = getFl();//that's a binding of the UIComponent, that holds all the inputTexts i care about
fl.processDecodes(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance());
fl.processValidators(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance());
And when i say make sure that the values are applied... i actually mean - get on my knees and pray because the whole thing looks too hacky already, but so far it works.
But now i have to make sure the validation has been ok (otherwise i get a funny effect of seeing the red popups at the invalid text inputs just for a second and then my region is refreshed to the new entity or i get an JBO exception depending of whether i call the next lines that follow without the if(..){processUpdates}
How do i check this:
System.out.println(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().isValidationFailed());
//The above line would print false nomatter what happenned so i decided to use this "something":
boolean validationFailed = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getMessageList().size()>0;
if(validationFailed){
//dont update the iterator's current row and return to the edit form page
return "fail";
}else{                    
fl.processUpdates(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance());
//update the current row and return to the edit form page
It took me days to come up with this...i would call it hack...And a day or two more to adapt the rest of the page's logic with the whole design changes i had to make but i still believe there must be some better solution that i am missing because for a number of reasons i don't feel right eith this one, which, while implemented and working (i hope) makes the whole real case a lot more complex than it used to be (and still feels like a hack),
just for the simple reason that I want to get some updated values back in the model.
Just as an example of a design change i had to make i give you the afformentioned methodCall i had to add, because the processUpdate would not work if not called with the right adf bindings context... first i tried calling them from a custom PhaseListener i have but at that moment nobody knows what #{bindings.MyEntityId.inputValue} is.
Thanks and Greeting
trout
Edited by: trout1234 on Aug 2, 2012 10:47 AM
Edited by: trout1234 on Aug 2, 2012 10:57 AM

Answer 1

Oh yes... and i have also noticed that if the action is triggered from a component(e.g. clicking on a commandLink) that is a part of the main page
the values are updated in all regions (i think so :) ) ... so i even tried a client listener in the first region that calls javascript function that queues a custom event with a source component from the main page, but yet the selection event is propagated to the server even with the event.cancel() and evt.stopBubbling()
and i could not make my custom event force the apply request values... but here i might have done somthing wrong i dont know it is a mess anyway... sure this one sound more of a hack than my current option....by my criteria at least