Difference between selectitem and selectitems tags

Question

What is the difference between the selectitem and selectitems tags in jsf?

Answer 1

The difference is exactly what you would expect. The selectitem tag adds a single item to the HTML list while selectitems adds multiple items.

From http://www.jsftoolbox.com/documentation/help/12-TagReference/core/f_selectItem.html:

SelectItem:

The SelectItem tag adds a child UISelectItem component to the component associated with the enclosing tag. In the HTML renderkit, this creates a single element. It can be used with any of the select tags in the JSF HTML tag library. The body content of this tag must be empty.

Example:

<h:selectOneMenu id="list1">
    <f:selectItem itemLabel="Option 1" itemValue="1"></f:selectItem>
</h:selectOneMenu>

HTML Output:

<select id="list1" name="list1" size="1">
    <option value="1">Option 1</option>
</select>

SelectItems:

The SelectItems tag adds a child UISelectItems component to the component associated with enclosing tag. You can use this tag to set a list of objects in your domain model as the options for a select component. The body content of this tag must be empty.

Example:

<h:selectManyListbox id="list">
    <f:selectItems value="#{optionBean.optionList}"></f:selectItem>
</h:selectManyListbox>

HTML Output:

<select id="list" name="list" multiple="true" size="-2147483648">
    <option value="1">Option 1</option>
    <option value="2">Option 2</option>
    <option value="3">Option 3</option>
</select>

Answer 2

Its also nice to remember that the f:selectItems can point to a SelectItem, an array or Collection of SelectItem objects, or a Map mapping labels to values.

Answer 3

what type returns optionBean.optionList ???