JSF 2 - clearing component attributes on page load?

Question

Hi,

The real question: Is there a way to clear certain attributes for all components on an initial page load?

Background info:

In my application, I have a JSF 2.0 frontend layer that speaks to a service layer (the service layer is made up of Spring beans that get injected to the managed beans).

The service layer does its own validation, and I do the same validation in the frontend layer using my own validator classes to try and avoid code duplication somehow. These validator classes aren't JSF validators, they're just POJOs.

I'm only doing validation on an action, so in the action method, I perform validation, and only if it's valid do I call through to the service layer.

When I do my validation, I set the styleClass and title on the UIComponents using reflection (so if the UIComponent has the setStyleClass(:String) or setTitle(:String) methods, then I use them).

This works nicely, and on a validation error I see a nicely styled text box with a popup containing the error message if I hover over it. However, since the component is bound to a Session Scoped Managed Bean, it seems that these attributes stick. So if I navigate away and come back to the same page, the styleClass and title are still in the error state.

Is there a way to clear the styleClass and title attributes on each initial page load?

Thanks,

James

P.S. I'm using the action method to validate because of some issues I had before with JSF 1.2 and it's validation methods, but can't remember why... so that's why I'm using the action method to validate.

Answer 1

Ok, so I must use a PhaseListener, see this blog entry by BalusC and this other blog entry, that's a much better way of doing what I'm doing already - setting the styleClass manually using reflection - which gets all components with messages and highlights them... I'm gonna do the same, however think it's possible to add an attribute instead, haven't tried it yet.