ViewScoped bean recreated instead of calling form action

Question

I have a managed bean, which is ViewScoped. In this bean I need to send a form (using h:commandButton). This works fine, except when I change my dropdown menu entry (which fires an event and update the page). After changing the dropdown menu's value, submitting the form recreate the bean (and skips the action associated with the h:commandButton).

Here's my XML:

<rich:panel styleClass="panel_grid_center fifty_percent"
        header="Bid matrix">

        <!-- display in case the user is not an admin -->
        <h:panelGroup rendered="#{not loginBean.isAdmin}">

            <h:outputText
                value="You do not have sufficient permission to view this page." />
            <br />
            <h:form>
                <h:commandLink action="index.xhtml"
                    value="Click here to go back to login page / search page." />
            </h:form>
        </h:panelGroup>

        <!-- display if the user is an admin -->
        <h:panelGroup rendered="#{loginBean.isAdmin}"  id="bid_matrices_panel">
                <h:panelGrid columns="2">

                    <!-- customer group panel -->
                    <rich:panel styleClass="contained_width fifty_percent"
                        header="Customer group">
                        <h:form>
                            <h:selectOneMenu
                                valueChangeListener="#{adminBean.onCustomerGroupChangeListener}"
                                value="#{adminBean.customerGroupService.displayCustomerGroup.spendMinimum}">
                                <f:selectItems
                                    value="#{adminBean.customerGroupService.customerGroups}"
                                    var="group" itemLabel="#{group.customerGroupLabel}"
                                    itemValue="#{group.spendMinimum}" />
                                <a4j:ajax event="valueChange" execute="@this"
                                    render="bid_matrices_panel" />
                            </h:selectOneMenu>
                        </h:form>
                    </rich:panel>

                    <!-- repeatables -->
                    <rich:panel styleClass="contained_width fifty_percent"
                        header="Repeatables">
                    </rich:panel>
                </h:panelGrid>

                <h:form>
                    <!-- we loop on each different commoditization (or however that's spelled) -->
                    <a4j:repeat var="bidmatrix_by_commoditization"
                        value="#{adminBean.bidMatrices}">
                        <rich:dataTable styleClass="contained_width"
                            value="#{bidmatrix_by_commoditization.bidMatricesByCoreStatus}"
                            var="matrix_by_core_status">


                            <!-- Display core status -->
                            <rich:column>
                                <f:facet name="header">
                                    <h:outputText
                                        value="#{bidmatrix_by_commoditization.commoditization}" />
                                </f:facet>
                                <h:outputText value="#{matrix_by_core_status.coreStatus}" />
                            </rich:column>

                            <!-- the percentages  -->
                            <c:forEach var="index" begin="0"
                                end="#{adminBean.columnsNumber - 1}">
                                <rich:column>
                                    <f:facet name="header">
                                        <h:outputText value="#{adminBean.columnsHeaders[index]}" />
                                    </f:facet>
                                    <h:inputText
                                        value="#{matrix_by_core_status.bidMatrices[index].percentage}">
                                        <f:convertNumber type="percent" />
                                    </h:inputText>
                                </rich:column>
                            </c:forEach>
                        </rich:dataTable>
                    </a4j:repeat>

                    <br />

                    <!-- update matrix button -->
                    <h:commandButton value="Update" action="#{adminBean.update}" />
                </h:form>
        </h:panelGroup>
    </rich:panel>

My bean:

@ManagedBean(name = "adminBean")
@ViewScoped
public class AdminBean implements Serializable {

    /**
     * 
     */
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 5917562235108703019L;

    private CustomerGroupService customerGroupService;
    private BidMatrixDao bidMatrixDao;
    private List<BidMatricesByCommoditization> bidMatrices;

    @PostConstruct
    public void init() {
        customerGroupService = new CustomerGroupService();
        bidMatrixDao = new BidMatrixDaoImpl();
        bidMatrices = bidMatrixDao.getBidMatricesByCustomerGroup(customerGroupService.getDisplayCustomerGroup());
    }

    public void onCustomerGroupChangeListener(ValueChangeEvent v) {
        customerGroupService.setDisplayCustomerGroup((BigDecimal) v.getNewValue());
        bidMatrices = bidMatrixDao.getBidMatricesByCustomerGroup(customerGroupService.getDisplayCustomerGroup());
    }

    public CustomerGroupService getCustomerGroupService() {
        return customerGroupService;
    }

    /**
     * @param customerGroupService
     *            the customerGroupService to set
     */
    public void setCustomerGroupService(CustomerGroupService customerGroupService) {
        this.customerGroupService = customerGroupService;
    }

    /**
     * @return the bidMatrices
     */
    public List<BidMatricesByCommoditization> getBidMatrices() {
        return bidMatrices;
    }

    /**
     * @param bidMatrices
     *            the bidMatrices to set
     */
    public void setBidMatrices(List<BidMatricesByCommoditization> bidMatrices) {
        this.bidMatrices = bidMatrices;
    }

    public int getColumnsNumber() {
        return bidMatrices.get(0).getColumns();
    }

    public List<String> getColumnsHeaders() {
        return bidMatrixDao.getAlignments();
    }

    public void update() {
        bidMatrixDao.updateBidMatrices(bidMatrices);
    }
}

Note that I correctly import ViewScoped from javax.faces.bean.ViewScoped; I also removed the getters/setters from my bean but they are there. As I said, the form works fine when submitted without changing the h:selectOneMenu value.

Thank you !

Edit: I'm using jsf 2.2 (mojarra), richfaces 4.1, with wildfly 10.1

Answer 1

I fixed this by moving the id used in my ajax directive:

<a4j:ajax event="valueChange" execute="@this" render="bid_matrices_panel" />

I originally put the id in the parent panelGroup, like this:

<h:panelGroup rendered="#{loginBean.isAdmin}"  id="bid_matrices_panel">

By creating a rich:panel around the part I actually want to rerender, my problem is fixed:

<h:form>
    <rich:panel id="bid_matrices_panel">
        <! -- my data to render -->

    </rich:panel>

    <h:commandButton value="Update" action="#{adminBean.update}" />
</h:form>

I guess re-rendering the form was the source of the issue.

Pretty sure I tried that before, but at that time I also had forgotten to implements Serializable on my AdminBean...