I want to have access from my backing bean to attributes

Question

Hi,
I have a table PERSON with the columns ID (PK), FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME and SALUTATION_ID (FK).
I have a second table SALUTATION with the columns ID and NAME.
I do use the following lines of code if I want to make changes to the PERSON table and it works fine.
DCBindingContainer dcBind = (DCBindingContainer)getBindings();
DCIteratorBinding iterBind = (DCIteratorBinding)dcBind.get("PersonCollectionIterator");
iterBind.getCurrentRow().setAttribute("FIRST_NAME", "Tobias");
dcBind.getOperationBinding("mergeEntity").execute();
My problem is, that I can't change the SALUTATION_ID of PERSON. I don't have access to that attribute. I did use the following line of code to print out all the available attributes and it only showed ID, FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME.
iterBind.getCurrentRow().getAttributeNames()
What could I do?
Thank You
Tobias

Answer 1

Hi!
I assume that you use EJBs. Then, you have no foreign keys in your parent entity (Person). Instead you have a mapping to the related entity (Salutation) by which you can access a salutation for a person like this (I'm using EL for simplicity):
Person p = resolve("#{PersonCollectionIterator.currentRow.dataProvider}");
Salutation s = p.getSalutation();
and you can set a salutation by:
p.setSalutation(newSalutation);
where newSalutation is an salutation entity you somehow retrieved from your model. For example, if you enter salutation ID in text box on your page, then in backing bean button action listener you should call findSalutationById method in Fascade which returns a newSalutation entity and then set that new salutation as above. After that, you have a new salutation mapped to person and you can invoke mergeEntity on you Fascade.
Hope this helps.
PaKo