Confusion about backing beans and multiple pages

Question

Hello:
I'm new to JSF and am confused by several high level and/or design issues surrounding backing beans. The
application I am working on (not unlike many apps out there, I suspect), is comprised of several forms which
collect various query parameters and other pages that display the query results via dataTables. Additionally, the
displayed results have hyper-text enabled content sprinkled throughout in order to allow further "drill-down" to
greater details about a given result.
Obviously, the initial forms are backed by a managed bean that has the getters/setters for each of the various
fields. From a modularization perspective, I'd prefer to have the query execution in a separate class entirely,
which I can accomplish via delegation or actionListeners. Where I get confused is in the case that one of the
hyper-text enabled fields needs to invoke yet another query requiring specific values from the original result.
In this case, how should I design the beans to store the pertinent selection information AND still be able to
have the resulting 'details' query in a separate class.
For example, let's assume that I have a form with a simple backing bean to collect initial query params. The user
fills out the form and clicks on submit. The action field of the <h:commandButton> tag inside the <h:form>
delegates to a method which performs the query and returns a navigation string to the results display page. The
results page then uses a <h:dataTable> tag to display the results. However, through the process of displaying the
results, it will create the hyper-text links as follows:
                    <h:form>
                        <h:commandLink action="viewDetails">
                            <h:inputHidden id="P_ID" value="#{results.id}"/>
                            <h:outputText value="Click here to see details"/>
                        </h:commandLink>
                    </h:form>Notice that the value="#{results.id}" is the key field (in some case I may need more than one) that the subsequent
details page will need to perform the query. However, this value is stored in the results attribute of the original
query backing bean. I do NOT want to add yet another level of queries into the same backing bean as I would like
to keep the original and details query beans separated for maintenance and style reasons. How then, can I get this
specific value ("#{results.id}") into another backing bean that could be accessed by the subsequent details page
and query? In general, how does one map a single display element to multiple backing beans (or accomplish the
effect of having one 'source' bean's value end up in another 'destination' bean's attr? If this is not possible,
then isn't the details query/page forced to use the same backing bean in order to get the data it needs? If so,
how can it determine which id was selected in this case?
I'd appreciate any thoughts, ideas and suggestions here! Is there a better way to design the above in order to
maintain the separation of logic/control? What is the 'best practice' approach for this sort of stuff?
Thanks much in advance!

Answer 1

This is what I have done in the pass
<h:commandLink action="#{AppAction.getRecord}" >
<h:outputText value="#{bbr.id}"/>
<f:param name = "recordid" value ="#{bbr.id}" />
</h:commandLink>
within the getRecord method
String key = "";
FacesContext facesContext = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
     ServletContext servletContext = ServletContext)facesContext.getExternalContext().getContext();
key = (String)facesContext.getExternalContext().getRequestParameterMap().get("recordid");
then call you dbmethod passing in the key of the record the user wants to edit
and then simply return a string to what page you want the user to go to
I think this is what your looking for