How to access parent document from Java listener

Question

I have two applications, let's call them Gantt and Activity List. The Gantt application is an ADF application. The Activity List application is not. The Gantt application is hosted inside an <iframe> in the Activity List application. There is an input text entry field with ID "unassignedTaskId" in the Activity List application.
In the Gantt application, when the user clicks a button, there's a Java "listener" method in a bean. In this Java code, I want to access the value in that "unassignedTaskId" field and use it. How can I do that? JavaScript will not work for me in this case. I can access the UIViewRoot which is the top-level component in my page, but how do I get that one more level up, into the owner of the <iframe>, from the listener Java code?
I am using JDeveloper 11.1.1.0.2. Any advice appreciated.

Answer 1

I found a way to achieve what I want. I finally realized (I don't know why it took me so long) that the Java code was server code and that the UIViewRoot is sort of a copy of what is in the "real" DOM. Of course I can't get to the outer frame. Duh!
Once that finally clicked, I looked around and rediscovered clientListeners. I added a Javascript function getUnassignedTaskId(event) to get the value from the parent app and copy it into a hidden component in my app. Then I added an af:clientListener to my button to call this function. The clientListener gets called before the actionListener. So first the client side JavaScript copies the value from the parent app to my ADF app's hidden control, then the server side Java code can see it via the hidden control and its backing bean. Problem solved!