Need to invoke bean method prior to initial page

Question

I have a web application with a default welcome page (index.jsp) that automatically forwards to a page with JSF tags in it (home.jsp). I use:
<jsp:forward page="home.faces" />to accomplish this. This works fine for rendering the JSF tags in the page as long as the page does not need data from the server.
However, this is not the case. I need to have a backing bean method invoked as follows:
  // ActionListener handler.
  public void retrievePagerList(ActionEvent event) {
    if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
      logger.debug("In retrievePagerList method of backing PagerBean.");
    try {
      setPagers(PagerDAO.selectAll());
    catch (SQLException e) {
      logger.error("Error retrieving list of pagers: ", e);
  public void setPagers(List pagers) {
    this.pagers = pagers;
    if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
      logger.debug("Number of pagers set: " + pagers.size());
  }I want to load a list of objects from the database so that the initial page shown to the users has a list of pagers displayed as follows:
<f:view>
  <h:form>
  <h:dataTable styleClass="dataTable"
               value="#{pagerBean.pagers}"
               var="pager">
    <h:column>
    <h:commandLink id="editPager"
                   title="Edit Pager"
                   value="Edit"
                   action="edit"
                   actionListener="#{pagerBean.editPager}">
    </h:commandLink>
    </h:column>
    <h:column>
      <h:outputText value="#{pager.pagerType}"/>
    </h:column>
    <h:column>
      <h:outputText value="#{pager.pagerName}"/>
    </h:column>
  </h:dataTable>
  </h:form>
</f:view>How can I accomplish this? I cannot seem to find a way to have a backing bean method invoked to put objects into the request (or session scope) in order for the initial JSP to display properly.

Answer 1

jsf 1.2 will contains beforePhaseListener attribute for f:view that allows to call some code before page is loaded. For the current jsf version, it is usually recommended to register your own phase listener that is invoked "before Render Response" phase.
Sergey : jsfTutorials.net