lightbulb432 schrieb: > Where's the correct place to initialize a JSF custom component (in this case, > a subclass of HtmlForm)? Because much of my initializing involves > manipulating the component's children components, I decided to override > getChildren() and do my initialization there - BAD IDEA! > > ...it turns out that getChildren() is called BEFORE restoreState(), so when > you submit the form, restoreState isn't called and getChildren() fails > because it's in an uninitialized state. > > I was thinking about using initializers or constructors, but then I figured > to avoid it because some initialization could depend on the component > properties getting populated first. (And initializers/constructors would be > called before those properties get populated, via their setters.) > > It looks like I'm running out of options - what's the best practice on this? > Thanks.
Do you want to initialize this component just once, or repeat the logic once for each http request? To initialize the component when first created, I would suggest that the best place is just before rendering starts. So encodeBegin() seems like a good idea here. Of course if you only want this done once then you would need a boolean "initialized" flag on the component, and skip initializing if this is set. If you also want to re-initialize the component at the start of a postback, then perhaps decode() is the best place; it seems nicely symmetric with using encodeBegin as the other hook. Using restoreState for initialize-on-postback is also possible, but restoreState is not called if the SERIALIZE_STATE_IN_SESSION configuration flag is false. It is true by default, and I would recommend to always leave it as true, so this is not a big issue. Nevertheless, using decode avoids this problem. Regards, Simon -- -- Emails in "mixed" posting style will be ignored -- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style)
