JSV-Validation discards some backing bean properties

Question

Hi guys,
I'm facing a curious problem occuring in my jsf-application. I have a userlist on my page. Every user can be edited (change password, etc) or a new user can be created. When I click the "edit-user"-button, a new page is opened where I can change different properties of this user. When I submit the form, the jsf-validation is beeing called (because I set some properties to attribute "required"). When an error occurs, the action-command returns null and goes back to the page. But not all properties of my backing bean arent set! It seems, that only the properties beeing set to attribute "required" are saved... How can I fix this?
My jspx-page that creates/updates a user looks like that:
<h:form>
     <h:inputHidden value="#{userFormBean.userID}" />
     <h:panelGrid border="0" columns="2" style="margin-bottom:15px;">
          <h:outputLabel value="#{msg['ui.user.create.lastname.label']}:" />
          <h:inputText value="#{userFormBean.name}"
                          required="true"
                          label="#{msg['ui.user.create.lastname.label']}" />
          <h:outputLabel value="#{msg['ui.user.create.firstname.label']}:" />
          <h:inputText value="#{userFormBean.firstname}"
                          required="true"
                          label="#{msg['ui.user.create.firstname.label']}" />
          <!-- more properties... -->
     </h:panelGrid>
     <c:if test="#{userFormBean.state == applicationScope.constants.STATE_NEW}">     
          <h:commandButton action="#{userFormBean.createUser}" value="#{msg['ui.user.create.button']}">
               <f:setPropertyActionListener value="#{applicationScope.constants.STATE_NEW}" target="#{userFormBean.state}"/>
          </h:commandButton>
     </c:if>
     <c:if test="#{userFormBean.state == applicationScope.constants.STATE_UPDATE}">
          <h:commandButton action="#{userFormBean.updateUser}" value="#{msg['ui.user.update.button']}">
               <f:setPropertyActionListener value="#{applicationScope.constants.STATE_UPDATE}" target="#{userFormBean.state}"/>
          </h:commandButton>
     </c:if>          
</h:form>     This is my backing bean that does all the logic...
public String updateUser(){
     try{
          // do some business-logic
     }catch (Exception ex){
          // set error message and return to form
          FacesContext ctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
          // provide some error-msgs
          return null;
     return "success";
}I need to save all the properties on my backing bean, especially my "state"-property that decides whether I create a new user or update a given user identified by its id...

Answer 1

To start, do not mix JSF with JSTL this way. Remove all of those c:if tags and use the JSF 'rendered' attribute instead.
E.g.
     <c:if test="#{userFormBean.state == applicationScope.constants.STATE_NEW}">     
          <h:commandButton action="#{userFormBean.createUser}" value="#{msg['ui.user.create.button']}">
               <f:setPropertyActionListener value="#{applicationScope.constants.STATE_NEW}" target="#{userFormBean.state}"/>
          </h:commandButton>
     </c:if>should be
     <h:commandButton action="#{userFormBean.createUser}" value="#{msg['ui.user.create.button']}" rendered="#{userFormBean.state == applicationScope.constants.STATE_NEW}">
          <f:setPropertyActionListener value="#{applicationScope.constants.STATE_NEW}" target="#{userFormBean.state}"/>
     </h:commandButton>Back to your actual problem: I cannot correlate your problem description to the given code snippet. Which non-set values are you talking about?