Writing a custom UIOutput component

Question

Hi,
I'm attempting to write a custom tag (with facelets) to conditionally render its child components.
The tag should be something like this:
<mw:menu>
  <h:outputText value="blabla"/>
</mw:menu>My menu tag will try to a menu file, and if it exists must insert that file's content as the child content of the mw:menu tag. If not, it should render the default, in this case "<h:outputText value="blabla">". Here's the problem, I can't work that one out, so I hoped you guys could help me along.
Here's what I have (simplified):
public class Menu extends UIOutput {
     private boolean renderDefaultMenu = false;
     public Menu() {
          super();
     public void encodeBegin(FacesContext context) {
          String url = null;
          try {
               // .... Get and read the menu file .....
               String inputLine;
               while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null)
                    context.getResponseWriter().write(inputLine);
               in.close();
               // We printed the menu, so skip the default menu
               // that is in this tag's body.
               return;
          } catch (FileNotFoundException ex) {
               log.warn("Menu file not found (" + url + "), reverting to default menu.");
          } catch (Exception ex) {
               // ... Some logging ...
          renderDefaultMenu = true;
     public boolean getRendersChildren() {
          return renderDefaultMenu;
     public void encodeChildren(FacesContext context) throws IOException {
          super.encodeChildren(context);
     @Override
   public String getFamily(){
       return "be.xxx.web.Menu";
     @Override
     public String getRendererType() {
          return null;
}So far I have only been testing the case of FileNotFoundException, but my menu tag never renders its children.
Anyone knows what I'm doing wrong here?
Thanks

Answer 1

Hi,
Thanks for the quick response. Could you please suggest me a way to go about writing your own custom renderers?
Thanks.