Submit: new or existing backing bean?

Question

I have a page that has a backing bean and a Save button:
<h:commandButton value="Save"
          action="#{objInstancePage.save}"          
          id="saveButton" />
When it is clicked the save() method is called on my objInstancePage bean. This is almost what I expect, but it seems like JSF is creating a new ObjInstancePage bean and calling the save() method on the new bean. #{objInstancePage } was referenced several other places on the page before the save button. The new bean doesn't have data that I have put into the bean other places on the page. So the data I want to save isn't there on the server when save() is called.
Is this a misunderstanding on my part? I thought JSF would call save() using the same bean instance that is used other places on the page, and not create a new bean. Thanks.

Answer 1

Not actually. A request scoped bean has a lifetime of one request. This lifetime starts when the client invokes a request (either GET by a link or POST by a form) and ends when the response is been completed to the client. So once the webpage is finished loading at the client, the request scoped bean is garbaged. When you submit a form on this page to the server, a new request scoped bean will be created, with all properties set to default. A session scoped bean has a longer lifetime and will only be garbaged when the session is invalidated. An application scoped bean has the same lifetime as the servletcontext and is been garbaged when you restarts the webapplication on the server or shutdown the server.