How iterate over List<T> and render each item in JSF Facelets

Question

I am wondering how to display a List<T> as obtained below in a Facelet:

public List<T> searchByString(String string) {
    return getEntityManager().createNamedQuery("Userdetails.findByUsername").setParameter("username", "%" + string + "%").getResultList();
}

Would a <h:dataTable> be a suitable way?

Answer 1

You're going need to iterate over it. JSF 2 offers three iteration components out the box. Provided that the User entity look like below,

@Entity
public class User {
    private @Id Long id;
    private String username;
    private String email;
    private LocalDate birthdate;
    // Add/generate getters+setters.
}

and that the search results are assigned as a List<User> users property of a bean which is available as #{bean},

@Named @RequestScoped
public class Bean {
    private List<User> users;
    // Add/generate postconstruct+getter.
}

here are some examples based on it:

1. <h:dataTable>, an UI component which generates a HTML <table>.

   <h:dataTable value="#{bean.users}" var="user">
       <h:column>#{user.id}</h:column>
       <h:column>#{user.username}</h:column>
       <h:column><a href="mailto:#{user.email}">#{user.email}</a></h:column>
       <h:column>#{user.birthdate}</h:column>
   </h:dataTable>
   

2. <ui:repeat>, an UI component which generates no HTML markup (so, you'd have to write all that HTML in the desired fashion yourself, which could easily be changed to e.g. <ul><li>, or <dl><dt><dd>, or <div><span>, etc):

   <table>
       <ui:repeat value="#{bean.users}" var="user">
           <tr>
               <td>#{user.id}</td>
               <td>#{user.username}</td>
               <td><a href="mailto:#{user.email}">#{user.email}</a></td>
               <td>#{user.birthdate}</td>
           </td>
       </ui:repeat>
   </table>
   

3. <c:forEach>, a tag handler which runs during view build time instead of view render time (background explanation here: JSTL in JSF2 Facelets... makes sense?), it also doesn't produce any HTML markup:

   <table>
       <c:forEach items="#{bean.users}" var="user">
           <tr>
               <td>#{user.id}</td>
               <td>#{user.username}</td>
               <td><a href="mailto:#{user.email}">#{user.email}</a></td>
               <td>#{user.birthdate}</td>
           </td>
       </c:forEach>
   </table>
   

See also:

• Java EE 6 tutorial - Adding components to a page - using <h:dataTable>
• How and when should I load the model from database for h:dataTable