Hi !
I'm facing some problems to get what I really want out of MyFaces' tree component.
First of all : why did you design it so "poorly" ? (sorry 'bout that, I do appreciate your work *a lot*, but this "everything-in-the-model-thing", except for the iconProvider and the impotent selectionListener, is really making this component user-unfriendly).
Most of the time, trees are used to navigate through a hierarchical structure, and then get details about some node (like a File Explorer, for instance) in some other pane.
Well, how do you do that in practice ? You usually make two frames, the left one with the tree, the right one with the info you need. Then how do you pass the selected node to the other frame ? Well, the only way seems to acces FacesContext and put the selected node into the session map... Quite boring... What's more, once this is done, YOU STILL CAN'T UPDATE THE RIGHT PANEL WITHOUT TAKING SOME OTHER ACTION (clicking on a button, most of the time). You did have the good idea to render the tree nodes as html links... great ! Why can't we add an action to these links ? I did try to manipulate the nodes programmatically, but I do not have sufficient comprehension of the JSF structure to be able to do that... And I think one shouldn't... After all, we're users and should be "protected" from the implementation part, shouldn't we ? IMHO, only the model should be accessed from within Java code, not the underlying JSF renderers...
What about some additionnal provider ? Something like an "URLProvider" or some "getAction()" and "getTarget()" methods inside the selection listener; when a node is clicked, one could then provide dynamically the action to be taken (the page to display), and the target (the frame where it should be displayed). A bit less powerful solution (because a bit more "monolithic") would be to add "action" and "target" attributes to the tree tag... It would be quite normal, since there IS a form behind that component, isn't it ? But the only thing it's intended to do, is refreshing the tree's frame...
Actually, all this would not be necessary if you don't use frames... the whole page gets refreshed, and everything works fine... But, come on... 99% of the time, one will want to be able to scroll the right panel while keeping the tree accessible...
So, I thought "Right, I'll give iframes a try"... I'll put the tree in the first column of a panelGrid, and the table containing the info on the second one, inside an iframe... Well, MyFaces seems not to be able to handle iframes...
My code looks like this :
<h:panelGrid columns="2">
<x:tree (...)>
(...)
</x:tree>
<f:verbatim>
<iframe src="">
</f:verbatim>
</h:panelGrid>
I tried surrounding the verbatim tags with a subview tag, it doesn't change anything. The error I get when I click anywhere on the tree is a _javascript_ error : "Object expected".
Sorry if this mail is a bit lengthy, but this problem really matters to me, and I wanted to describe the problem as thoroughly as possible, and propose constructive solutions.
Thanks a lot in advance !
GG.
