RichInputText setValue not working from server side

Question

getting a reference to the backing bean that contains an inputTextbox
.. you are able to get the RichInputText box but calling setValue
has no affect on the UI... it sets it in memory but it doesn't update
on the GUI...
String deviceAssignTabStr = "#{backing_DeviceAssign}";
Object deviceAssignTabObj = ELUtil.get(deviceAssignTabStr);
DeviceAssign deviceAssignTab = (DeviceAssign) deviceAssignTabObj;
if (deviceAssignTab != null)
deviceAssignTab.getInputText6().setValue(rowOutput.toString());;

Answer 1

Hello,
You need to reset the local value, so use something like:
myInputComponent.resetValue();
myInputComponent.setValue(newValue);n
However, in your specific case, it seems very messy. You're just not using the good EL. It seems that you create a look of backing beans for bindings and none for values while it should be the opposite 99% of the times. "binding" attribute is unsafe and has many limitations, I don't know why people keep using it carelessly without any formal reason. As for defining many managed beans, you can add an ELResolver of your own instead and create them without defining them in any configuration file if that's what you dislike. About filling the session, I must disagree, it highly depends on the use case. The first scope to evaluate should ALWAYS be request as it's the most back/refresh button resistant scope. If the request scope doesn't fit, then most of the time the page flow one does, note that it fill the session memory footprint even more than the session scope, but it's also back resistant to some extends. Only when you need something really session scoped should you use it.
Finally, your way to access a managed bean seems either quite inefficient or inelegant. JSF provides two better means for that:
1. Injection, inject the backing bean in your action bean declaratively. That strategy doesn't always work though.
2. ELResolver. To access bean "backing_DeviceAssign", you can use the following which is, even if less sexy than a #{} delimited EL, much more efficient as it save some EL parsing time:
FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
ELContext elContext = context.getELContext();
boolean wasResolved = elContext.isPropertyResolved();
elContext.setPropertyResolved(false);
try
  Object bean = context.getApplication().getELResolver().getValue(elContext, null, "backing_DeviceAssign");
  if (elContext.isPropertyResolved())
    return bean;
  else
    throw new FacesException("Could not find bean backing_DeviceAssign");
catch (Exception e)
  throw new FacesException("Could not find bean backing_DeviceAssign", e);
finally
  elContext.setPropertyResolved(wasResolved);
}Yes, it's ugly... Thanks to the really not so good ELResolver chain architecture that also prevent easy decorator...
Regards,
~ Simon