Very big problem with JSF about FORM and "id=" for HTML form's elements and

Question

I have discovered a very big problem with JSF about FORM and "id=" for HTML form's elements and java instruction "request.getParameterNames()".
Suppose you have something like this, to render some datas form a Java Beans :
<h:dataTable value="#{TablesDb2Bean.myDataDb2ListSelection}" var="current" border="2" width="50%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="text-align: center">
<h:column>
<f:facet name="header">
<h:outputText value="Name"/>
</f:facet>
<h:outputText id="nameTableDb2" value="#{current.db2_name_table}"/>
</h:column>
</h:dataTable>
Everything works fine...
Suppose you want to get the name/value pairs for id="nameTableDb2" and #{current.db2_name_table} to process them in a servlet. Here is the HTML generated :
<td><span <span class="attribute-name">id=<span class="attribute-value">"j_id_jsp_1715189495_22:0:nameTableDb2">my-table-db2-xxxxx</span></td>
You think you can use the java instructions :
Enumeration NamesParam = request.getParameterNames();
while (NomsParam.hasMoreElements()) {
String NameParam = (String) NamesParam.nextElement();
out.println("<h4>"++NameParam+ "+</h4>);
YOU ARE WRONG : request.getParameterNames() wants the syntax *name="nameTableDb2" but JSF must use id="nameTableDb2" for "<h:outputText"... So, you can't process datas in a FORM generated with JSF in a Servlet ! Perhaps I have made an error, but really, I wonder which ?
Edited by: ungars on Jul 18, 2010 12:43 AM
Edited by: ungars on Jul 18, 2010 12:45 AM

Answer 1

While I certainly appreciate ejb's helpful responses, this thread shows up a difference in perspective between how I read the forum and how others do. Author ejb is correct in advising you to stay inside JSF for form processing if form processing is what you want to do.
However, I detect another aspect to this post which reminds me of something Marc Andreesen once said when he was trying to get Netscape off the ground: "there's no such thing as bad HTML."
In this case, I interpret ungar's request as a new feature request. Can I phrase it like this?
"Wouldn't it be nice if I could render my nice form with JSF but, in certain cases, when I REALLY know what I'm doing" just post out to a separate servlet? I know that in this case I'll be missing out on all the nice validation, conversion, l10n, i18n, ajax, portlet and other features provided by JSF".
If this is the case, because it really misses the point of JSF, we don't allow it, but we do have an issue filed for it
https://javaserverfaces-spec-public.dev.java.net/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=127
If you can't wait for it to be fixed, you could decorate the FormRenderer to fix what you want.
I have an example in my JSF book that shows how to do this decoration. http://bit.ly/edburnsjsf2
Ed