Render(true or false) on initial request

Question

Hello all,
I have a JSF page which has a button (HtmlCommandButton) on. I want the button to be rendered/displayed depending on a value in the session. How can I do this?
I have the button binded to a HtmlCommandButton instance field member of the AddCaseForm managed bean (see below). On the initial request though I am getting a NullPointerException because in the constructor of the ManagedBean I do :
if(valueFromSession == whatever){
          offenderFindButton.setRendered(false);
      }else{
          offenderFindButton.setRendered(true);
      }BUT the offenderFindButton is actually null intially. How can I get around this?
TAG
<h:commandButton type="button" value="Find"
                                       binding="#{AddCaseForm.offenderFindButton}"
                                       immediate="false"/>
ManagedBean Field
In MangedBean the field is: private HtmlCommandButton offenderFindButton;Thanks much,
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I wonder, why you do not like just using the
'rendered' attribute of the commandButton for this
purpose?Thanks Sergey it seemed to have worked. I did not really think of doing it that way. I thought that you could have been able to do it from within the constructor of the backing bean since the button was binded to a instance member of the backing bean class.
I am actually still curious why it did not work and why the command button instance field was not initialized by the time the constructor of the backing bean executes on the initial request. Could someone please explain if possible?
Thanks again.