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PrimeFaces - Opening and Selecting Dialog Content Programmatically

[Last Updated: Nov 22, 2017]

PrimeFaces's Dialog Framework (DF) can be used to open a dialog from our Managed Bean. Additionally, we can select the content of the dialog dynamically rather than declaring <p:dialog /> statically. RequestContext#openDialog() is used to open such dialog.

Example

JSF page

src/main/webapp/index.xhtml

<h:body>
    <h2>PrimeFaces - Programmatic Dialog</h2>
    <h:form>
        <br/>
        <p:commandButton value="Show Employees" actionListener="#{mainBean.showEmployees}"/>
    </h:form>
</h:body>

The manage bean

@ManagedBean
public class MainBean {

  public void showEmployees(ActionEvent ae) {
      RequestContext.getCurrentInstance().openDialog("employee", getDialogOptions(), null);
  }

  public Map<String, Object> getDialogOptions() {
      Map<String, Object> options = new HashMap<>();
      options.put("resizable", false);
      options.put("draggable", true);
      options.put("modal", true);
      options.put("height", 400);
      options.put("contentHeight", "100%");
      return options;
  }
}

The Dialog Content Page

src/main/webapp/employee.xhtml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!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:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
      xmlns:p="http://primefaces.org/ui">
<h:head>
    <title>Employees</title>
</h:head>
<h:body>
    <h:form>
    <p:dataTable var="employee" value="#{employeeBean.employeeList}">
        <p:column headerText="Id">
            <h:outputText value="#{employee.id}"/>
        </p:column>

        <p:column headerText="Name">
            <h:outputText value="#{employee.name}"/>
        </p:column>

        <p:column headerText="Phone Number">
            <h:outputText value="#{employee.phoneNumber}"/>
        </p:column>

        <p:column headerText="Address">
            <h:outputText value="#{employee.address}"/>
        </p:column>
    </p:dataTable>
    </h:form>
</h:body>
</html>

The Employee bean

@ManagedBean
@ViewScoped
public class EmployeeBean {
  private List<Employee> employeeList = new ArrayList<>();

  @PostConstruct
  private void postConstruct () {
      DataFactory dataFactory = new DataFactory();
      for (int i = 1; i < 10; i++) {
          Employee employee = new Employee();
          employee.setId(i);
          employee.setName(dataFactory.getName());
          employee.setPhoneNumber(String.format("%s-%s-%s", dataFactory.getNumberText(3),
                                                dataFactory.getNumberText(3),
                                                dataFactory.getNumberText(4)));
          employee.setAddress(dataFactory.getAddress() + "," + dataFactory.getCity());
          employeeList.add(employee);
      }
  }

  public List<Employee> getEmployeeList () {
      return employeeList;
  }
}

faces-config.xhtml

For Dialog Framework to work, we need to add following configurations in faces-config.xhtml.

src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/faces-config.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<faces-config xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
              xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
              xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
	http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_2_1.xsd"
              version="2.1">
    <application>
        <action-listener>
            org.primefaces.application.DialogActionListener
        </action-listener>
        <navigation-handler>
            org.primefaces.application.DialogNavigationHandler
        </navigation-handler>
        <view-handler>
            org.primefaces.application.DialogViewHandler
        </view-handler>
    </application>
</faces-config>

To try examples, run embedded tomcat (configured in pom.xml of example project below):

mvn tomcat7:run-war

Output

Example Project

Dependencies and Technologies Used:

  • primefaces 6.1 primefaces
  • jsf-api 2.2.14: This is the master POM file for Oracle's Implementation of the JSF 2.2 Specification.
  • jsf-impl 2.2.14: This is the master POM file for Oracle's Implementation of the JSF 2.2 Specification.
  • datafactory 0.8: Library to generate data for testing.
  • JDK 1.8
  • Maven 3.3.9

Opening Dialog Programmatically Example Select All Download
  • programmatic-dynamic-dialog
    • src
      • main
        • java
          • com
            • logicbig
              • example
                • MainBean.java
          • webapp
            • WEB-INF

    See Also