JSF commandButton URL parameters

Question

I would like to make a button which navigates to a different URL and pass some request parameters through in the URL. The outputLink works but I would like a button, the commandButton looks good but I can pass parameters.

Is there a solution?

Answer 1

The h:commandButton doesn't fire a GET request, but a POST request, so you can't use it. If you're already on JSF 2.0 and the target page is in the same context, then you can use the h:button for this:

<h:button value="press here" outcome="otherViewId">
    <f:param name="param1" value="value1" />
    <f:param name="param2" value="value2" />
</h:button>

(no h:form is required here as in h:outputLink ). This will create a button which goes to otherViewId.jsf?param1=value1&param2=value2 .

But if you're not on JSF 2.0 yet, then your best is just to grab CSS to style the link like a button.

<h:outputLink styleClass="button">

with something like

a.button {
    display: inline-block;
    background: lightgray;
    border: 2px outset lightgray;
    cursor: default;
}
a.button:active {
    border-style: inset;
}

Answer 2

With the button you associate an action , which is a method in the backing bean You can set params in the backing bean and read them when you press the button, from the method linked to action . The action method should return a String , which will be read by the Navigation Handler to check if it has to move to a new page, according to the configuration in the faces-config.xml .

<h:form>
    <h:commandButton value="Press here" action="#{myBean.action}">
        <f:setPropertyActionListener target="#{myBean.propertyName1}" value="propertyValue1" />
        <f:setPropertyActionListener target="#{myBean.propertyName2}" value="propertyValue2" />
    </h:commandButton>
</h:form>

Backing bean:

package mypackage;


public class MyBean {

    // Init --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    private String propertyName1;
    private String propertyName2;

    // Actions -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    public void action() {
        System.out.println("propertyName1: " + propertyName1);
        System.out.println("propertyName2: " + propertyName2);
    }

    // Setters -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    public void setPropertyName1(String propertyName1) {
        this.propertyName1 = propertyName1;
    }

    public void setPropertyName2(String propertyName2) {
        this.propertyName2 = propertyName2;
    }

}

This example is taken from here (BalusC blog, probably he will come and tell you to check that link but I'm faster! :P)

Of course to achive this the bean has to be set as session scoped . If you want it to be request scoped you can follow the steps here