JSF & h:selectItems issue

Question

hello all,
i am rewriting my app (originally written with Struts) in JSF, and i got at a dead end where i have to display in my JSP a selectable list which
is populated using a Collection of JavaBeans.
the option value is, let's say, JavaBean.property1 and the option label is JavaBean.property2.
CAn anyone tell me how to do this with JSF? though i searched the net, i was not able to find out how can i put a collection of JavaBeans into a h:selectItems tag.
the only structure usable is a Map, but i don't want to rewrite all my collections to be Map just to populate a selectable box
anyone can help me out?
do i need to write my own JSF component for that?
thanx and regards
marco

Answer 1

well,you need to use a backing bean to create the collection for selectItems value.But remember, every object in the collection is a SelectItem instance.in your example, your JavaBean class need to have a properties method, and it probably looks like this:
public List getProperties()
      List props=new LinkedList();
      SelectItem item1 =new SelectItem( prop1ID,prop1LabelValue);
      props.add(item1);
      SelectItem item2 =new SelectItem( prop2ID,prop2LabelValue);
      props.add(item2);
      return props;
}and in the jsf page,you may have the following line:
<f:selectItems value="#{JavaBean.properties}"/>
hope it is helpful:)
Robin