JSF screws IDs I specify for components padding them with "j_id_1"

Question

Hi everyone.
Have anybody faced such a problem? When I specify the ID for the component, say, "logn", it is added to view as "loginj_id_1" padded with "j_id_1". Sometimes it happends, sometimes it doesn't. It may happen only for some of the components on the page. It wouldn't be a problem if the id under which the component is known was the same in all cases. But it's not the case. When the form validation fails and it's time to fill <h:message for="login">, I get the lines in the log saying:
Unable to find component with ID loginj_id_1 in view.whereas the component exists under id "login". As for components at the same page whose IDs were padded with "j_id_1" there's no such an error and their <h:message>'s are filled as expected.
Does anyone know what can make JSF override the ID that I specify? How come that one component is treated under differend IDs all around the project? Could it be a result of incorrect mixing RI & MyFaces for I have both of them in classpath? I haven't noticed that problem before upgrading to JSF RI 1.2_02 that comes with SJSAS 9.0_1.

Answer 1

Each component is responsible for producing its own output, including it's HTML "id" attribute in the correct location. JSF does provide support for calculating the "id": UIComponent.getClientId(). The default implementation of this method is in UIComponentBase. I don't know if MyFaces has a different implementation or not... nor do I know if every component in your application produces HTML w/ id's formatted via this method. Some components may use serveral id's and create some or all of the id's by modifying the value rerturned by "getClientId()". Some containers (such as tables) may even manipulate the id's of their child components.
So w/o a concrete example, I can't answer your question.
Good luck!
Ken Paulsen
https://jsftemplating.dev.java.net