Need help with fillling backing bean w/info

Question

I am new to JSP and have some very basic questions regarding filling a JSF with data from the database and then allowing the user to edit and save the data back to the database.
I am using JDeveloper 10.1.3 developer preview
This is what I have so far (which may be suspect in itself):
1. A method called DatabaseUtil.getProductApproval(productApprovalNbr) which creates and returns a ProductApprovalBean
2. A JSF called search.jsp with backing bean Search.java.
3. Another JSF called productApproval.jsp with backing bean ProductApproval.java
4. Successful navigation defined from search.jsp to productApproval.jsp
5. The backing bean Search.java has a SearchButton_action that returns success if productApprovalNbr specified is OK (edit currently hard-coded)
6. The productApproval.jsp has a component called productApprovalNbr with binding to backing_search.productApprovalNbr
This is want I want to do but don’t know how:
1. Make a call to create the ProductApprovalBean and fill the productApproval.jsp backing bean with info from ProductApprovalBean before the productApproval.jsp is displayed to the user.
2. Allow the user to change values and save them back to the db after clicking on the save command button.
How do I wire this stuff up?
Any advice will be greatly appreciated because I am stuck big time.
Regards,
Al Malin

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply Brian.
I’ve looked at directly binding to the ProductApprovalBean and that looks like a good approach to take in other cases but for the UI design I currently have I am not sure.
Basically, the ProductApprovalBean is a master entity with several related detail entities. This is so because the user wants to see all of the related data on a single page instead of showing one page for a master, another for a detail, another for another detail, etc. So I am designing a JSF form that consists of multiple sections, each section presenting an entity. Each detail section would have its own command buttons for editing, adding, and deleting rows.
Since my first post I have figured out how to fire an event in search.jsp and catch it in an event handler in the backing_bean. (This was great progress --- only took me 9 hours to write 6 lines of code. :-) From here I figured I could access the db and load up the fields for the first screen and do updates with the subsequent screens.
After looking through the documentation, I not sure I’m up to the task. New problem, I don’t know the JSF classes well enough to load up the fields, and after they are loaded, how do I get the data out. (At first, JSF looked really slick but there has been a steep leaning curve associated with it, I'm real close to reverting to JSPs and servlets.)
If I am on the wrong path and this approach is all wet, please say so.
Regards,
Al Malin