Find component by ID in JSF

Question

I want to find some UIComponent from managed bean by the id that I have provided.

I have written the following code:

private UIComponent getUIComponent(String id) {  
      return FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getViewRoot().findComponent(id) ;  
}

I have defined a p:inputTextarea as:

<p:inputTextarea id="activityDescription" value="#{adminController.activityDTO.activityDescription}" required="true" maxlength="120"
    autoResize="true" counter="counter" counterTemplate="{0} characters remaining." cols="80" rows="2" />

Now if a call to the method as getUIComponent("activityDescription") it is returning null, but if I call it as getUIComponent("adminTabView:activityForm:activityDescription") then I can get the org.primefaces.component.inputtextarea.InputTextarea instance.

Is there any way to get the component with only the id i.e., "activityDescription" not the absolute id i.e., "adminTabView:activityForm:activityDescription"?

Answer 1

You can use the following code:

public UIComponent findComponent(final String id) {

    FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); 
    UIViewRoot root = context.getViewRoot();
    final UIComponent[] found = new UIComponent[1];

    root.visitTree(new FullVisitContext(context), new VisitCallback() {     
        @Override
        public VisitResult visit(VisitContext context, UIComponent component) {
            if (component != null 
                && id.equals(component.getId())) {
                found[0] = component;
                return VisitResult.COMPLETE;
            }
            return VisitResult.ACCEPT;              
        }
    });

    return found[0];

}

This code will find only the first component in the tree with the id you pass. You will have to do something custom if there are 2 components with the same name in the tree (this is possible if they are under 2 different naming containers).