What is STATE_SAVING_METHOD parameter in JSF 2.0 - jsf-2

I am not able to understand what is the function of this line in web.xml
<context-param>
<param-name>javax.faces.STATE_SAVING_METHOD</param-name>
<param-value>server</param-value>
</context-param>
I have read that the NetBeans default is client. I've just faced an issue that I have many beans in my application, and the <param-value> was set to client, so I was getting
java.io.NotSerializableException
error although my beans were Serializable (i.e. they implemented the Serializable interface.). My beans were in #ViewScope. But when I changed it to server, things are going to work. Why? What is the difference when I use client and server. Can anyone explain me with the help of an example.
Thanks

java.io.NotSerializableException
This kind of exception has usually a message in the root cause which shows the fully qualified class name of the class which doesn't implement Serializable. You should pay close attention to this message to learn about which class it is talking about and then let it implement Serializable accordingly.
Often, making only your managed bean classes serializable is not always sufficient. You also need to ensure that each of its properties is also serializable. Most standard types like String, Long, etc implement all already Serializable. But (custom) complex types such as nested beans, entities or EJBs should each also be serializable. If something is not really implementable as Serializable, such as InputStream, then you should either redesign the model or make it transient (and keep in mind that it will be null after deserialization).
What is the difference when i use client and server
First some background information: Why JSF saves the state of UI components on server?
The main technical difference is that the client setting stores the entire view state as the value of the javax.faces.ViewState hidden input field in the generated HTML output and that the server setting stores it in the session along with an unique ID which is in turn referenced as the value of the javax.faces.ViewState hidden input field.
So, setting to client increases the network bandwidth usage but decreases the server memory usage and setting to server does the other way round. Setting to client has however an additional functional advantage: it prevents ViewExpiredExceptions when the session has expired or when the client opens too many views.

javax.faces.STATE_SAVING_METHOD parameter is used to specify where the state should be saved.
If you want to save the state on the server (which is the default in the JavaServer Faces reference implementation), specify the param-value value as server.
Otherwise to save the state on the client side we can specify client in the param-value.
If the state is saved on the client, the state of the entire view is rendered to a hidden field on the page.

Related

Save global attribute value when new session starts

I have two fields in SAP Fiori App: Template_ID and Offer_ID.
I want to choose value in Offer_ID depending on Template_ID field value.
For solving this problem I've tried to do this steps:
When the user click on Template_ID field in Back-End runs the method:
CL_CUAN_CAMPAIGN_DPC->contentset_get_entityset().
This method has returning paramater et_result. In et_result I have the necessary field temp_id.
For saving temp_id value I created a global attribute in class ZCL_CUAN_CLASS.
ZCL_CUAN_CLASS=>GV_CONTENT = VALUE #( et_result[ 1 ]-temp_ID OPTIONAL ).
I'll use this global attribute as an input parameter for my second method:
CL_CUAN_CAMPAIGN_DPC->GET_OFFER_BY_TEMPLATE().
This method returns to me the internal table with the offer_id, which belongs to my choosen temp_id.
But when the user click on Offer_ID field on Web UI, in debugging I see that my global attribute is blank.
May be it's because of session or something else, but it's blank.
OData is a stateless protocol, meaning the server responds your query, then forgets you were ever there. By definition, this does not allow you to transport main memory content from one request to the next.
User interfaces on the other hand usually require state. It can be gained through one of the following options:
Stateful user interface
As Haojie points out, one solution is to store the data that was selected in the user interface and submit it as a filter criterion back to the server with the next request. Having a stateful user interface is the standard solution for stateless server apps.
Stateful persistence
Another option is to store the data permanently in the server's database, in ABAP preferredly in a business object. This object has a unique identifier, probably a GUID, that you can reference in your requests to identify the process you are working on.
Draft persistence
If not all information is available in one step, such as in a multi-step wizard, should not become "active" right away, or you want to be able to switch devices while working on a multi-step process, drafts are an option. Drafts are regular business objects, with the one specialty that they remain inert until the user triggers a final activation step.
Soft state
For performance optimizations, you can have a look at SAP Gateway's soft state mode, which allows you to buffer some data to be able to respond to related requests more quickly. This is generally discouraged though, as it contradicts the stateless paradigm of OData.
Stateful protocol
In some cases, stateless protocols like OData are not the right way to go. For example, banking apps still prefer to pertain state to avoid that users remain logged in infinitely, and thus becoming vulnerable to attacks like CSRF. If this is the case for you, you should have a look at ABAP WebDynpro for your user interface. Generally, stateful server protocols are considered inferior because they bind lots of server resources for long times and thus cannot handle larger user numbers.
When ther user click on OfferId field, it will start a NEW session and of course what you store as GV_CONTENT in class ZCL_CUAN_CLASS is lost.
What you should do is that for the second request you should send to backend with filter Template_ID so in your CL_CUAN_CAMPAIGN_DPC->GET_OFFER_BY_TEMPLATE() method, you can further process the result by Template_ID.
Or SET/GET Parameter.

Get the current session with spring-session

Here's my question: I'm writing a platform which I will be giving to the customers to implement their projects with. So in my platform I have created a SessionService in which I have methods like getCurrentSession, getAttribute, setAttribute, etc. Before spring-session my getCurrentMethod looked like this:
#Override
public HttpSession getCurrentSession() {
if (this.session == null) {
final ServletRequestAttributes attr = (ServletRequestAttributes) RequestContextHolder.currentRequestAttributes();
return attr.getRequest().getSession(true); // true == allow create
}
return this.session;
}
which worked perfectly fine, although it looks ugly and have no backing like redis. Now I want to migrate to spring-session and I was hoping to use the SessionRepository to find the current session of the user, however I can only see a getSession(String id) in there. I believe the id is stored in the cookie, so to use it I will probably have to pass the HttpServletRequest object from my controllers, to my facades, to the service layer which is very near the db layer. This looks like a very bad idea to me, so my question would be: is there any way to get the currentSession near the db layer? One way I would think is to write an interceptor that will be invoked the controllers, which will set the current session in the repository, or the service maybe? I'm just not sure this is the right way to go.
Obtaining the Session Id from Service Layer
You can use the RequestContextHolder to retrieve the session id, set attributes, and remove attributes.
The RequestContextHolder is typically setup using RequestContextListener or RequestContextFilter. Spring Session does NOT work with RequestContextListener because there is no way for Spring Session to wrap the request before the RequestContextListener is invoked.
Unfortunately, this means for Spring Boot applications, RequestContextHolder does not work out of the box. To work around it you can create a RequestContextFilter Bean. See spring-boot/gh-2637 for updates on this issue.
Should I be putting this in session?
Just because it is easy to put a lot of objects in session and it is stored in Redis does not mean it is the right thing to do.
Keep in mind that the entire session is retrieved on every request. So while Redis is fast, this can have a significant impact if there are lots of objects in session. Obviously the implementation can be optimized for your situation, but I think the concept of session generally holds this property.
A general rule of thumb is, "Do I need this object for over 95% of my requests?" (read this as almost all of my requests). If so, it may be a candidate for session. In most cases, the object should be security related if it fits this criteria.
Should I access session id from ThreadLocal in the service layer?
This is certainly open for debate as code is as much of an art as it is a science.
However, I'd argue that you should not be obtaining the session id from thread locale variables throughout your architecture. Doing this feels a bit like obtaining a "Person id" and obtaining the current "Person id" from the HttpServletRequest in a ThreadLocale. Instead, values should be obtained from the controller and passed into your service layer.
Your code does not need changing. It will return the Spring Session session object.
Though it is generally better to inject the HttpSession from the controller, or use session-scoped beans and #SessionAttribute than to have such a session service in the first place.

JSF duplicates actionListener, valueChangeListener and validator calls many times [duplicate]

There are lot of materials out there differentiating value attribute and binding attribute in JSF.
I'm interested in how both approaches differ from each other. Given:
public class User {
private String name;
private UICommand link;
// Getters and setters omitted.
}
<h:form>
<h:commandLink binding="#{user.link}" value="#{user.name}" />
</h:form>
It is pretty straight forward what happens when a value attribute is specified. The getter runs to return the name property value of the User bean. The value is printed to HTML output.
But I couldn't understand how binding works. How does the generated HTML maintain a binding with the link property of the User bean?
Below is the relevant part of the generated output after manual beautification and commenting (note that the id j_id_jsp_1847466274_1 was auto-generated and that there are two hidden input widgets).
I'm using Sun's JSF RI, version 1.2.
<form action="/TestJSF/main.jsf" enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
id="j_id_jsp_1847466274_1" method="post" name="j_id_jsp_1847466274_1">
<input name="j_id_jsp_1847466274_1" type="hidden" value="j_id_jsp_1847466274_1">
Name
<input autocomplete="off" id="javax.faces.ViewState" name="javax.faces.ViewState"
type="hidden" value="-908991273579182886:-7278326187282654551">
</form>
Where is the binding stored here?
How does it work?
When a JSF view (Facelets/JSP file) get built/restored, a JSF component tree will be produced. At that moment, the view build time, all binding attributes are evaluated (along with id attribtues and taghandlers like JSTL). When the JSF component needs to be created before being added to the component tree, JSF will check if the binding attribute returns a precreated component (i.e. non-null) and if so, then use it. If it's not precreated, then JSF will autocreate the component "the usual way" and invoke the setter behind binding attribute with the autocreated component instance as argument.
In effects, it binds a reference of the component instance in the component tree to a scoped variable. This information is in no way visible in the generated HTML representation of the component itself. This information is in no means relevant to the generated HTML output anyway. When the form is submitted and the view is restored, the JSF component tree is just rebuilt from scratch and all binding attributes will just be re-evaluated like described in above paragraph. After the component tree is recreated, JSF will restore the JSF view state into the component tree.
Component instances are request scoped!
Important to know and understand is that the concrete component instances are effectively request scoped. They're newly created on every request and their properties are filled with values from JSF view state during restore view phase. So, if you bind the component to a property of a backing bean, then the backing bean should absolutely not be in a broader scope than the request scope. See also JSF 2.0 specitication chapter 3.1.5:
3.1.5 Component Bindings
...
Component bindings are often used in conjunction with JavaBeans that are dynamically instantiated via the Managed
Bean Creation facility (see Section 5.8.1 “VariableResolver and the Default VariableResolver”). It is strongly
recommend that application developers place managed beans that are pointed at by component binding expressions in
“request” scope. This is because placing it in session or application scope would require thread-safety, since
UIComponent instances depends on running inside of a single thread. There are also potentially negative impacts on
memory management when placing a component binding in “session” scope.
Otherwise, component instances are shared among multiple requests, possibly resulting in "duplicate component ID" errors and "weird" behaviors because validators, converters and listeners declared in the view are re-attached to the existing component instance from previous request(s). The symptoms are clear: they are executed multiple times, one time more with each request within the same scope as the component is been bound to.
And, under heavy load (i.e. when multiple different HTTP requests (threads) access and manipulate the very same component instance at the same time), you may face sooner or later an application crash with e.g. Stuck thread at UIComponent.popComponentFromEL, or Threads stuck at 100% CPU utilization in HashMap during JSF saveState(), or even some "strange" IndexOutOfBoundsException or ConcurrentModificationException coming straight from JSF implementation source code while JSF is busy saving or restoring the view state (i.e. the stack trace indicates saveState() or restoreState() methods and like).
Also, as a single component basically references the rest of the entire component tree via getParent() and getChildren(), when binding a single component to a view or session scoped bean, you're essentially saving the entire JSF component tree in the HTTP session for nothing. This will get really costly in terms of available server memory when you have relatively a lot of components in the view.
Using binding on a bean property is bad practice
Regardless, using binding this way, binding a whole component instance to a bean property, even on a request scoped bean, is in JSF 2.x a rather rare use case and generally not the best practice. It indicates a design smell. You normally declare components in the view side and bind their runtime attributes like value, and perhaps others like styleClass, disabled, rendered, etc, to normal bean properties. Then, you just manipulate exactly that bean property you want instead of grabbing the whole component and calling the setter method associated with the attribute.
In cases when a component needs to be "dynamically built" based on a static model, better is to use view build time tags like JSTL, if necessary in a tag file, instead of createComponent(), new SomeComponent(), getChildren().add() and what not. See also How to refactor snippet of old JSP to some JSF equivalent?
Or, if a component needs to be "dynamically rendered" based on a dynamic model, then just use an iterator component (<ui:repeat>, <h:dataTable>, etc). See also How to dynamically add JSF components.
Composite components is a completely different story. It's completely legit to bind components inside a <cc:implementation> to the backing component (i.e. the component identified by <cc:interface componentType>. See also a.o. Split java.util.Date over two h:inputText fields representing hour and minute with f:convertDateTime and How to implement a dynamic list with a JSF 2.0 Composite Component?
Only use binding in local scope
However, sometimes you'd like to know about the state of a different component from inside a particular component, more than often in use cases related to action/value dependent validation. For that, the binding attribute can be used, but not in combination with a bean property. You can just specify an in the local EL scope unique variable name in the binding attribute like so binding="#{foo}" and the component is during render response elsewhere in the same view directly as UIComponent reference available by #{foo}. Here are several related questions where such a solution is been used in the answer:
Validate input as required only if certain command button is pressed
How to render a component only if another component is not rendered?
JSF 2 dataTable row index without dataModel
Primefaces dependent selectOneMenu and required="true"
Validate a group of fields as required when at least one of them is filled
How to change css class for the inputfield and label when validation fails?
Getting JSF-defined component with Javascript
Use an EL expression to pass a component ID to a composite component in JSF
(and that's only from the last month...)
See also:
How to use component binding in JSF right ? (request-scoped component in session scoped bean)
View scope: java.io.NotSerializableException: javax.faces.component.html.HtmlInputText
Binding attribute causes duplicate component ID found in the view
each JSF component renders itself out to HTML and has complete control over what HTML it produces. There are many tricks that can be used by JSF, and exactly which of those tricks will be used depends on the JSF implementation you are using.
Ensure that every from input has a totaly unique name, so that when the form gets submitted back to to component tree that rendered it, it is easy to tell where each component can read its value form.
The JSF component can generate javascript that submitts back to the serer, the generated javascript knows where each component is bound too, because it was generated by the component.
For things like hlink you can include binding information in the url as query params or as part of the url itself or as matrx parameters. for examples.
http:..../somelink?componentId=123 would allow jsf to look in the component tree to see that link 123 was clicked. or it could e htp:..../jsf;LinkId=123
The easiest way to answer this question is to create a JSF page with only one link, then examine the html output it produces. That way you will know exactly how this happens using the version of JSF that you are using.

Wrong selected option for selectOneMenu with POJOs and Converter

in our company we're hitting a serious problem which we think is a serious design flaw of the JSF spec, if it is the normal behavior.
This is our usecase:
SelectOneMenu (standard JSF or primefaces, doesn't matter, same behavior)
SelectItems with a database entity as it's value and a string as the label
A converter (via attribute on the selectOneMenu) which translates the entity to its ID (getAsString) and from the ID to the entity (getAsObject)
Everything works as expected as long as the entity inside the value attribute of the selectOneMenu is loaded using the same entityManager as the entities inside the selectItems. We have the same POJOs and therefore the same hashcode (Object#equals() returns true). But as soon as one of the entities is loaded via a different entityManager and therefore has a different hashcode, we are never able to get a match to generate the expected selected attribute of an select item (HTML <option /> ).
The cause of this behavior is, that the JSF-impl and primefaces both use the POJOs in the call
boolean selected = isSelected(context, menu, itemValue, valuesArray, converter);
for itemValue and valuesArray. The implementation of isSelected relies on Object#equals() for POJOs. In my opinion it should always use the value of Converter#getAsString if we have a Converter and pass it to isSelected. This is also the behavior for a POST request. Here we got a submittedValue for the selectOneMenu which is compared to the converted value of the POJO (Converter#getAsString).
Now the question:
Is this the expected behavior as it's described in the spec? Isn't the output of the converter the better way to handle this comparision? Now we have to modify our entity classes and overwrite the equals method to be able to use this construct.
Your mistake is that you forgot to implement/autogenerate equals() (and hashCode()) method conform the contract. This is beyond control of JSF. Pointing the accusing finger to JSF isn't making any sense.
It's handy to have a base entity where all your entities extend from so that you don't need to repeat the task over all entities (even though the average IDE/tool can easily autogenerate them). You can find an elaborate example in 2nd "See also" link.
See also:
Validation Error: Value is not valid
Implement converters for entities with Java Generics
I believe that this is the correct behavior. On Java side the values of the component and selection are POJOs. You have full control of the logic of their equality etc. It should not matter how it is converted to UI display and back. As a component user you should not bother to know how the POJO is displayed. As text, icon, color, whatever. The Java side of the component undestands and communicats with POJOs
YOUR CODE ----------> JAVA COMPONENT --------> CONVERTER ----------> HTML
Also I guess that relying on reference equality for entities is a road to problems. Setting equals/hashCode to use actual ID is the best approach.

Passing parameters between Request Scoped Managed Beans in JSF + EJB 3.1

Our problem is a very basic, simple implementation of editing the database using JSF + EJB.
Keeping things short:
two separate XHTML views, use two separate Managed Beans #RequestScope.
WebuserListBean and EditWebuserBean, and with #ManagedProperty we inject WebuserListBean, so we could obtain selected user data. So far no problems. Views are filled with data succesfully!
BUT!
We want to be able to edit the user!
And here (to my surprise) we cannot overcome the problem.
1st try:
Because the request scoped bean is dead after filling the view, on Save() method the #PostConstruct tries to launch again, of course it can't. So we couldn't even obtain it from database or anything.
2nd try:
Because the request scoped bean is dead after filling the view, if we do not set up user as field in #postconstruct, we lose our connection with user object which was linked on previous view (and injected, but now that view is dead too).
3rd try:
Cannot inject RequestScope in ViewScoped
Ok and our restrictions, because we think it's wrong way:
We dont want to create a SessionScoped Managed Bean for this
We dont want to use any params etc. We want to use EJB
We are not sure if we could store data in Stateful session bean which is our
endpoint for the module? Is it proper approach?
Thanks for any advice, we could paste some code but i guess it is pointless!
Cheers!
There are many ways to do it, but I recommend using the flash if the pages involved in the navigation are in the same folder (I recently found out reading a BalusC answer that there is a known issue with the flash, in which it will not hold values when navigating between pages in different folders!).
The flash is a way to hold parameters for a little longer than the context of a single request (concept taken from Ruby if I'm not mistaken, someone correct me if I'm wrong), allowing for the sent parameters to be fetched in a subsequent view, for example. Those values are discarded in the second request issued after saving them, if I'm not mistaken. You can inject the flash in your managed beans like this:
#ManagedProperty("#{flash}")
private Flash flash;
public void setFlash(Flash newFlash) {
flash = newFlash;
}
Then, you access it like a map with the put and get methods. If you use the put method in a bean, return a redirection rule and, on the second bean, use the get method your object should be there.
You can also find a highly comprehensible guide of communication in JSF (listing a really extensive list of options) here, in particular if you need to navigate between pages in different folders.

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