How does JSF 2 ConversationScope work?
I have a JSF facelets page that displays a table of data depending on which page they are viewing. When I display page 1, I call the view() action method to get the data from the database for both pages and store it as a private member field of the bean (two arrays). I also call conversation.start() on the injected conversation instance in the view() method.
When the user clicks the "next" button (h:commandButton) to go to page 2, I am executing a next() method to update the backing bean to point to array 2 so it will print out its contents. The problem is, array 2 no longer exists. I don't know why I am losing conversation scope. Any ideas?
//tells the object which page we are on, and thus what data to display.
private int part = 1;
// These arrays are filled with data but conversation scope doesn't
// keep them on the next postback.
private int[] part1 = new int[15], part2 = new int[15];
Answer
You should paste some more code so we can help you better. From what you say i cannot see where you called the method for ending the conversation(You need that too when working with conversation scope).
I will paste here a little example that i think will help you understand how conversation scope works:
This is the start page of a wizard(Conversation scope is great for wizards)
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core">
<h:head>
<title>ConversationScoped demo CDI(Component Dependency
Injection)</title>
</h:head>
<h:body>
<h3>ConversationScoped demo CDI(Component Dependency Injection)</h3>
<p>A conversation scope provides persistence until a goal is
reached<br />
In this example the first entered value will remain until the end
method is called<br />
in some page.<br />
This is a really useful gadget, for making registration wizards and
similar tools...</p>
<h:form>
<h:outputText value="Type something" />
<h:inputText value="#{ supportBB.someValue}" />
<h:commandButton value="continue" action="#{ supportBB.onClick}" />
</h:form>
</h:body>
</html>
This is the second page of the wizard
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core">
<h:head>
<title>ConversationScoped demo CDI(Component Dependency
Injection)</title>
</h:head>
<h:body>
<h3>This is the next page(The value is saved in the conversation)</h3>
<h4><h:outputText value="#{ supportBB.someValue}"/></h4>
<h:form>
<h:commandButton value="Finish conversation" action="#{ supportBB.onKeepGoing}"/>
</h:form>
</h:body>
</html>
And this is the page where the scope ends
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core">
<h:head>
<title>ConversationScoped demo CDI(Component Dependency
Injection)</title>
</h:head>
<h:body>
<h3>This is the last page.The value still saved in conversation(until the end() method is called)</h3>
<h4><h:outputText value="#{ supportBB.someValue}" /></h4>
<h:form>
<h:outputText
value="Click finish to end the conversation(So saved values are disposed)" />
<h:commandButton value="Finish" action="#{ supportBB.onFinish}" />
</h:form>
</h:body>
</html>
Here the @ConversationScoped backing bean that starts and ends the conversation
package backingbeans;
import java.io.Serializable;
import javax.enterprise.context.Conversation;
import javax.enterprise.context.ConversationScoped;
import javax.inject.Inject;
import javax.inject.Named;
@Named()
@ConversationScoped()
public class SupportBB implements Serializable {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
private String someValue;
@Inject
private Conversation conversation;
// Control start and end of conversation
public void start() {
conversation.begin();
}
public void end() {
conversation.end();
}
// Navigation
public String onClick() {
if(someValue.equals("") || conversation == null) {
return "";//Dont go anywhere if the there was no input the field
}
start();
return "nextpage?faces-redirect=true";
}
public String onKeepGoing() {
return "finish?faces-redirect=true";
}
public String onFinish() {
end();// If triggered when there is no conversation(i.e URL Navigation)
// there will be an exception
return "index?faces-redirect=true";
}
// Getters & Setters
public String getSomeValue() {
return someValue;
}
public void setSomeValue(String someValue) {
this.someValue = someValue;
}
}
I think this example is very simple and can help you understand how it works. Ask if you don't understand something
NOTE:
I think but i am not sure at 100% but ConversationScope only works if the backing bean is a CDI bean. This mean uses the annotation @Named. Better double check that.