preRenderView-Event triggered before an action (commandbutton) - jsf-2

Question

I am in a little bit of trouble with my preRenderView-Event. My page also uses a commandbutton to submit data but unfortunately the preRenderView-Event is always called before the buttons action is invoked.
The preRenderView-Event is responsible for loading data from a service. Since the page is simple and doesnt have to store any data I dont need any Session or ViewScoped-Beans.
As far as I understood the event is called in the Render-Response-Phase and the action in the button should happen somewhat earlier.
<h:body>
<f:metadata>
<f:viewParam name="id" value="#{bean.id}" converter="converter.SetOfLongConverter"/>
<f:event type="preRenderView" listener="#{bean.initializeData}" />
</f:metadata>
<ui:composition template="/META-INF/templates/myTemplate.xhtml">
<ui:param name="title" value="#{bean.title}"/>
<ui:define name="content">
<h:outputText value="#{bean.description}" />
<h:form>
<h:panelGrid columns="2">
<h:outputLabel value="Model" for="model" />
<h:inputText id="model" value="#{bean.model}" />
<h:outputLabel value="Manufacturer" for="manufacturer" />
<h:inputText id="manufacturer"
value="#{bean.manufacturer}" />
<h:outputLabel value="Year" for="year" />
<h:inputText id="year" value="#{bean.year}" />
</h:panelGrid>
<h:commandButton value="Create" type="submit" action="#{bean.create}" rendered="#{bean.createMode}"/>
<h:commandButton value="Save" type="submit" action="#{bean.save}" rendered="#{!bean.createMode}" />
</h:form>
</ui:define>
</ui:composition>
</h:body>
I added some Console-Messages to verify when the method in the bean is called and when I have the preRenderView-event it never happens.
Any advice what I am doing wrong here?

Answer 1

The <f:metadata> has to go inside <ui:define> of an <ui:composition>.
See also <f:metadata> tag documentation (emphasis mine):
Declare the metadata facet for this view. This must be a child of the <f:view>. This tag must reside within the top level XHTML file for the given viewId, or in a template client, but not in a template. The implementation must insure that the direct child of the facet is a UIPanel, even if there is only one child of the facet. The implementation must set the id of the UIPanel to be the value of the UIViewRoot.METADATA_FACET_NAME symbolic constant.
The simple reason is because the metadata is supposed to be view-specific, not template-specific.
Update: it turns out that the action method is not invoked at all. You've there a rendered attribute on the command button which seems according the symptoms to be dependent on a request based variable instead of a view based variable. Putting the managed bean in the view scope should fix this problem. See also commandButton/commandLink/ajax action/listener method not invoked or input value not updated