How do I get the rowid or the DataModel from a DataTable inside a DataTable

Question

Hi,
I have a simple application which I cannot get to work.
I have two entity classes: Parent and Child.
I want to create a page which lists all of the Parents, and in a column of the Parent row has an inner dataTable which displays the Children of the Parent. I then want to click on the Child and link to a view of that Child. What is happening is that I cannot resolve which child was clicked inside my row. I don't seem to be able to get the datamodel for the List children, so it always defaults to the first child in the list.
Goal: drill down to a specific child from a list of parents with a sublist of children belonging to each parent.
I have tried creating a new method called prepareChildView() in ParentController like this below but it always returns the first child. I figure I need to create the DataModel earlier but cannot figure out how to do this. Perhaps the auto generated pattern makes it difficult to achieve what I want to - not sure.
public String prepareChildView() {
        current = (Parent)getItems().getRowData();
        DataModel d = new ListDataModel(current.getChildren());
        Child child = (Child)d.getRowData();
        //child is always the first child!
        return "\children\View";
    }I may be going about this completely wrong so am open to suggestions. I am using JSF2, Glassfish3.0.
Parent.java
@Entity
public class Parent implements Serializable {
    @OneToMany(mappedBy = "parent", cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
    private List<Child> children;
    public List<Child> getChildren() {
        return children;
    public void setChildren(List<Child> children) {
        this.children = children;
}Child.java
@Entity
public class Child implements Serializable {
    @ManyToOne
    @JoinColumn(name = "parent")
    private Parent parent;
    public Parent getParent() {
        return parent;
    public void setParent(Parent parent) {
        this.parent = parent;
}ParentFacade and ChildFacade are auto generated from NetBeans, as are ParentController and ChildController.
ParentController:
Code doen't fit in the post.
List.xhtml
<h:form styleClass="jsfcrud_list_form">
            <h:panelGroup id="messagePanel" layout="block">
                <h:messages errorStyle="color: red" infoStyle="color: green" layout="table"/>
            </h:panelGroup>
            <h:outputText escape="false" value="#{bundle.ListParentEmpty}" rendered="#{parentController.items.rowCount == 0}"/>
            <h:panelGroup rendered="#{parentController.items.rowCount > 0}">
                <h:outputText value="#{parentController.pagination.pageFirstItem + 1}..#{parentController.pagination.pageLastItem + 1}/#{parentController.pagination.itemsCount}"/> 
                <h:commandLink action="#{parentController.previous}" value="#{bundle.Previous} #{parentController.pagination.pageSize}" rendered="#{parentController.pagination.hasPreviousPage}"/> 
                <h:commandLink action="#{parentController.next}" value="#{bundle.Next} #{parentController.pagination.pageSize}" rendered="#{parentController.pagination.hasNextPage}"/> 
                <h:dataTable value="#{parentController.items}" var="item" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" rowClasses="jsfcrud_odd_row,jsfcrud_even_row" rules="all" style="border:solid 1px">
                    <h:column>
                        <f:facet name="header">
                            <h:outputText value="Id"/>
                        </f:facet>
                        <h:outputText value="#{item.id}"/>
                    </h:column>
                    <h:column>
                        <f:facet name="header">
                            <h:outputText value="Name"/>
                        </f:facet>
                        <h:outputText value="#{item.name}"/>
                    </h:column>
                    <h:column>
                        <f:facet name="header">
                            <h:outputText value="Children" />
                        </f:facet>
                        <h:dataTable value="#{item.children}" var="child" >
                            <h:column>
                                <h:commandLink action="#{parentController.prepareView}" value="#{child.name}" />
                            </h:column>
                        </h:dataTable>
                    </h:column>
                    <h:column>
                        <f:facet name="header">
                            <h:outputText value=" "/>
                        </f:facet>
                        <h:commandLink action="#{parentController.prepareView}" value="#{bundle.ListParentViewLink}"/>
                        <h:outputText value=" "/>
                        <h:commandLink action="#{parentController.prepareEdit}" value="#{bundle.ListParentEditLink}"/>
                        <h:outputText value=" "/>
                        <h:commandLink action="#{parentController.destroy}" value="#{bundle.ListParentDestroyLink}"/>
                    </h:column>
                </h:dataTable>
            </h:panelGroup>
            <br />
            <h:commandLink action="#{parentController.prepareCreate}" value="#{bundle.ListParentCreateLink}"/>
            <br />
            <br />
            <h:commandLink value="#{bundle.ListParentIndexLink}" action="/index" immediate="true" />
        </h:form>

Answer 1

Hi,
It will help to resolve your issue:
    public String processChildView(){
        UIComponent component = null;
        String  componentId = null;
        Parent parent = null; //Bean class
        Child child = null; //Bean Class
        FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
        UIViewRoot root = context.getViewRoot();
        String childView = "childView";
        //Parent Table UIData
        componentId = "parentChildTable";
        component = findComponent(root, componentId);               
        UIData parentTable = (UIData) component;
        //Child Table UIData
        componentId = "childTable";
        component = findComponent(root, componentId);               
        UIData childTable = (UIData) component;
        //Perform Parent Child operation
        if(parentTable != null && childTable != null){
            if(parentTable.getRowData() instanceof Parent){
                //Get Parent Object from parentTable
                parent = (Parent) parentTable.getRowData();
                //Get child object by parent object using childTable's Row Index
                parent = (Parent) parentTable.getRowData();
                child = (Child) parent.getChild().get(childTable.getRowIndex());
                System.out.println("Parent Name " + parent.getName() + "Child Name " + child.getName());
        return childView;
    //Utility method to get component by passing component id in requested view
    public static UIComponent findComponent(UIComponent c, String id) {
         if (id.equals(c.getId())) {
           return c;
         Iterator kids = c.getFacetsAndChildren();
         while (kids.hasNext()) {
           UIComponent found = (UIComponent) findComponent((UIComponent)kids.next(), id);
           if (found != null) {
             return found;
         return null;
  } Regards,
Manish Paliwal
"Life is beautifull."