JSF Method Binding

Question

Hi everyone, I'm totally new to JSF and have been working on the examples by the James Holmes book, JSF Complete Ref:
http://www.jsfcompref.com/code_download.html
I have a question on MethodBinding managed beans.
In my faces-config.xml file I can specify a value for my currentYear.
  <managed-bean>
    <managed-bean-name>UserBean</managed-bean-name>
    <managed-bean-class>com.jsfcompref.register.UserBean</managed-bean-class>
    <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>
    <managed-property>
          <property-name>currentYear</property-name>
          <value>2007</value>
     </managed-property>
  </managed-bean>And I can retreive that as follows:
<h:inputText value="#{UserBean.currentYear}" required="true"
                              id="currentYear"/>That works, what I want to do is call a method from my faces-config file as such:
    <managed-property>
          <property-name>currentYear</property-name>
          <value>#{UserBean.someMethod}</value>
     </managed-property>But that returns an error
javax.faces.FacesException: Detected cyclic reference to managedBean UserBean...Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

BalusC wrote:
You indeed cannot let the managed bean preinstantiate itself before setting any value in self. That would cause an infinite loop of managed bean creations, that's why this "cyclic reference" error is been thrown.
The only solution is to use the constructor for that instead:public UserBean() {
currentYear = someMethod();
Thank you Balus!! That was so easy it's scary :)