h:dataTable with component binding not rendering

Question

Hello,
I am developing an application with several ad-hoc queries that need to be displayed in data table elements. The number and label values of the columns are not known until runtime. I am attempting to use a component binding mechanism to intercept the UIData and add columns to it at runtime, depending on the data currently held in a backing bean instance (such as an ad-hoc query result).
I'm not sure where I can actually intercept the table and add the columns. I've got the following code example to compile and run without error, but nothing gets rendered properly - I get an opening <table> tag in the HTML source and nothing else follows.
I have compared the structure of the table created with the following binding method to a table created with simple <h:dataTable> tags, and I see only one difference. The datatable created with tags has a single attribute in its attribute map called "javax.faces.webapp.COMPONENT_IDS" that maps to an ArrayList of the component IDs of the h:column elements I specify on the JSF page. The datatable I attempt to create in the binding method does not have this attribute in its map, and I can't seem to manually add it in without creating further havoc. (the child count, types of children, etc all seem to be equivalent).
From the JSF perspective this is how I've defined the h:dataTable tag instance...
<h:dataTable id="categoryTable" rendered="true"
        binding="#{backingBeanInstance.table}"
            value="#{backingBeanInstance.rows}"
                var="row"  border="2" />This is basically the code in the backingBeanInstance....
    private UIData table;
    public void setTable(UIData table){
        this.table = table;
       //initTable();   //tried this but seems not to work either?
    public UIData getTable(){
        if(table!=null){
            initTable(); //build the columns and add to the table
        return table
    private void initTable(int categoryIndex){
            //This block is just a way to calculate the number of columns
            int colCount = <depends on data held in bean>
            //Resolve the var string for the data table
            String item = table.getVar();
            System.out.println("item: " + item);  //this is always null the 1st time through?? why?
            UIColumn col;
            UIOutput out;
            FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
            Application app = context.getApplication();
            //For each column in the data, create a UIColumn as child of the
            //data table.  Create a UIOutput as child of the UIColumn and bind
            //the value of the UIOutput to the data with an EL expression
            for (int j = 0; j < colCount; j++) {
                //create an instance of UIOutput to display the value for this cell
                out = new UIOutput();
                out.setRendererType("Text");
                //create an instance of UIColumn
                col = new UIColumn();
                //construct the value binding string as an EL expression
                String valueBindingString = "#{" + item + "[" + j + "]}";
                //create the value binding
                ValueBinding vb = app.createValueBinding(valueBindingString);
                //set the value binding on the UIOutput object
                out.setValueBinding("value", vb);
                //add the UIOutput component to the UIColumn as a child
                col.getChildren().add(out);
                //add the UIColumn to the data table as a child
                table.getChildren().add(col);
    }

Answer 1

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