Put Hibernate Objects in f:selectItems and retrieve them after submit

Question

Hi,
My question is if there is a convenient way to put a list of hibernate objects in combobox and retrieve the selected one after the user submitted the form.
What I do now is this:
I retrieve a list of Hibernate objects and create a list of selectItems, using their id as the value and their name as the description.
Example:
public List<SelectItem> getCountries() {
          List<SelectItem> re = new ArrayList<SelectItem>();
          for (Country countries : this.dao.getCountries()) {
               Short id = countries.getIsoCountrycode();
               String desc = countries.getName();
               SelectItem item = new SelectItem(id, desc);
               re.add(item);
          return re;
In the save-method i use another dao method to retrieve the country object by using the id (isocountrycode). This seems very inefficient to me, as i retrieve the country object which i already have in memory to feed the combobox in the first place.
Is there a better way?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Looks like I and BalusC interpreted your questions differently.
The way I have implemented this case is to have get and set methods for the selectedProperty in my bean.
I also have the change propertyChanged method that sets the session attribute whenever the user changes the selection.
       public String getSelectedPropertyType() {
            return this.selectedPropertyType;
       public void setSelectedPropertyType(String selectedPropertyType) {
            this.selectedPropertyType = selectedPropertyType;
            HttpServletRequest request = getHttpRequest();
            request.getSession().setAttribute("selectedPropertyType", selectedPropertyType);
       public void propertyTypeSelectionChanged(ValueChangeEvent event) {
            if (event.getNewValue() == null) return;
            String newValue = (String) event.getNewValue();
            setSelectedPropertyType(newValue);
       }Whenever you need the currently selected property, you would just need to get the #(myBean.selectedProperty).
If you find a simpler solution than this, please let me know.