JSF: h:outputText; how to show a dash when the value is empty string?

jsf el
user550738 picture user550738 · Jan 24, 2011 · Viewed 57.2k times · Source

I'm using h:outputText tags to display readonly data. Ex:

<h:outputText value="Phone Number:" />
<h:outputText value="#{userHandler.user.phoneNumber}" />

When "phoneNumber" is an empty string or a null, I want to display a dash "-" as the value.

Is there any easy way to do this maybe with expression language or something?

BTW, I thought about adding methods to the User class like getPhoneNumberDisplayText() that could do the check internally, but I since it's a view issue, I'd rather keep the code in the JSF page.

Answer

Bozho picture Bozho · Jan 24, 2011 
<h:outputText value="#{userHandler.user.phoneNumber != null 
    ? userHandler.user.phoneNumber : '-'}" />

Or, you could make a new outputText:

<h:outputText rendered="#{userHandler.user.phoneNumber == null}" value="-" />

Related questions

The representation of if-elseif-else in EL using JSF

The following JSF code contains two separate <c:if></c:if>. Let's look at it. <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:h="http://java.…

Read More
How does EL empty operator work in JSF?

In JSF an component can be rendered or not using the EL empty operator rendered="#{not empty myBean.myList}" As I've understood the operator works both as null-check, but also check checks if the list is empty. I want to …

Read More
How do you get the length of a list in the JSF expression language?

How would I get the length of an ArrayList using a JSF EL expression? #{MyBean.somelist.length} does not work.

Read More