How to prepopulate properties of a backing bean

Question

Hi Everybody,
I am new to JSF. In order to display a form with fields set to some value, I was trying to prepopulate properties of the form's backing bean based on properties of another bean. I tried the following and it doesnot work
<managed-bean>
<description>blah blah</description>
<managed-bean-name>visitBean</managed-bean-name>
<managed-bean-class>com.x.y.VisitBean</managed-bean-class>
<managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>
</managed-bean>
managed-bean>
<description>blah blah</description>
<managed-bean-name>infoBean</managed-bean-name>
<managed-bean-class>com.x.z.InfoBean</managed-bean-class>
<managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
<managed-property>
<property-name>name</property-name>
<value>#{visitBean.user.name}</value>
</managed-property>
<managed-property>
<property-name>phoneNumber</property-name>
<value>#{visitBean.user.phoneNumber}</value>
</managed-property>
</managed-bean>
I want to use the InfoBean class to capture data from info.jsp. I also want the info.jsp to be prepopulated with data from VisitBean.
I first populate the visit bean from the database and then when the user clicks on the edit information link, the information form in info.jsp should be prepopulate with his information.
Am I doing something wrong ? Is there a more elegant way of initializing the properties of a backing bean ?
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use the constructor to set the initial values of your bean.
You may need to retrieve the visitBean from the session scope to do this.
FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().
               getSessionMap().get("visitBean");Hope this helps.
CowKing