Passing a parameter from a map

Question

I'm re-writing an old web-based application in ADF Faces. The old application had this on one of the pages called quickSearch:
<map name="FrontPagemap0">
  <area shape="RECT" coords="22, 339, 214, 500"
        href="addressSearch?state=AK"/>
  <area shape="POLYGON"
        coords="149, 195, 135, 266, 111, 259, 82, 239, 85, 227, 90, 220, 89, 199, 92, 194, 97, 193, 101, 183"
        href="addressSearch?state=AZ"/>
  <area shape="POLYGON"
        coords="356, 209, 356, 214, 360, 214, 357, 223, 353, 232, 345, 248, 346, 252, 317, 250, 314, 246, 311, 244, 316, 209"
        href="addressSearch?state=AR"/>
  <area shape="POLYGON"
        coords="50, 104, 44, 146, 88, 218, 79, 234, 79, 237, 51, 230, 49, 221, 36, 210, 25, 200, 21, 196, 17, 175, 4, 138, 4, 136, 4, 133, 11, 94, 13, 91"
        href="addressSearch?state=CA"/>
  <!-- more area tags here -->
</map>
&lt;img src="/images/us_Imap4.gif" alt="US Map"
     height="528" width="600" usemap="#FrontPagemap0"/>addressSearch in the original application was a PL/SQL web procedure that took state as a parameter and used it as the default value for a dropdown list. In the new application, addressSearch is addressSearch.jspx, and the dropdown list updates a property of a managed bean in session scope. If it was a commandLink component that led from the quickSearch page to the addressSearch page, I'd just use setActionListener.
But this is the equivalent of a goLink component. How do I get the value of the state code for the state that the user clicked into the managed bean property to serve as the default for the dropdown in addressSearch?
I know that I can reference the parameter to addressSearch.jspx as #{param.state}, but is there a way to get it into the managed bean before addressSearch is rendered?

Answer 1

You marked the question answered, so I assume you found the solution.
If yes you should post it here, if not you should not mark the question answered ;-)
For web apps the normal way to handle this is to stream the data back to the browser and let the browser decide what to to with the data. The only thing you have to do is to set the content type of the response to i.e. application/pdf (for pdf ) or application/msword for Word. I'm not sure if application/dwg works on the fly, but if you define the file type .dwg to open AutoCAD it should work.
Timo