How to use SelectOneRadio within a DataTable

Question

Hi,
I have a requirement to have a radio button for each row in the datatable. It is to enable selecting one row(only one row) from the table and proceed to the next page. The table should look like
o Name1 address1 city1 state1
o Name2 address2 city2 state2
o Name3 address3 city3 state3
o Name4 address4 city4 state4
Next>>
The data structure I have is a collection on objects of type person.
Class person
String id;
String name;
String address;
String city;
String state;
getters and setters
I tried to use SelectOneRadio within a Column, but that didnt help. As obvious it treats each rows radio button as a seperate radio group.
<h:datatable var="person" value="#{personList}>
<h:column>
<h:selectOneRadio>
<f:selectItem itemValue="#{person.id}"/>
</h:selectOneRadio>
</h:column>
<h:column>
<h:outputText value="#{person.name}"\>
</h:column>
</h:datatable>
I am new to JSF. I searched thru some JSF websites and book, but couldnt find a solution. Can someone help me solve this.
Thanks in advance
Rani

Answer 1

Hi,
after some time probing into this issue I think none of the many proposed sollutions really solves the underlying problem: Working around the issue becomes much to complicated for JSFs stated design goal of easing development. Certainly for such a common case scenario no workaround should be neccessary, especially given the fact that JSTL is easily able to model this without the need for workarounds!
In my opinion JSF TagLib implementations should attempt to solve this in a coming version.
One part of the sollution might be to make <f:selectItem> search it's parent element recursively, i.e. allow the expected container element to be the nearest direct or indirect parent that's suitable. This would allow developers to envelope a <h:dataTable> tag with a <h:selectOneRadio> element. Any <f:selectItem> element inside would therefore be part of a single choice radio button selection, regardless of them being distributed over multiple rows or columns.
Another part of the sollution might be to allow <h:selectOneRadio> and similar tags to be substitutes for <h:column> tags inside tables. This way a complete column of radio buttons could be used to chose a single value, thereby allowing multiple columns of radio buttons to choose multiple values within the same table.
Please forward this suggestion for enhancement in kind to the expert group working on the further development of the JSF taglibs. I guess many people besides me already use it as a classical example of complications using JSF during lectures about the tomic, and at least in this case the problem seems completely solvable.
Kind regards,
Sascha Baumeister
software architect, university lecturer and former JCP spec lead JSR086