The Java EE 5 Tutorial

Rendering Components for Selecting One Value

Another common UI component is one that allows a user to select one value, whether it be the only value available or one of a set of choices. The most common examples of this kind of component are:

Figure 11–4 shows examples of these components.

Figure 11–4 Example Select One Components

Screen capture of radio buttons, check box, drop-down
menu, and list box.

Displaying a Check Box Using the selectBooleanCheckbox Tag

The UISelectBoolean class defines components that have a boolean value. The selectBooleanCheckbox tag is the only tag that JavaServer Faces technology provides for representing boolean state. The Duke’s Bookstore application includes a selectBooleanCheckbox tag on the bookcashier.jsp page:

<h:selectBooleanCheckbox
     id="fanClub"
    rendered="false"
    binding="#{cashier.specialOffer}" />
<h:outputLabel
     for="fanClub"
    rendered="false"
    binding="#{cashier.specialOfferText}">
     <h:outputText
         id="fanClubLabel"
        value="#{bundle.DukeFanClub}" />
</h:outputLabel>

This example tag displays a check box to allow users to indicate whether they want to join the Duke Fan Club. The label for the check box is rendered by the outputLabel tag. The actual text is represented by the nested outputText tag. Binding a Component Instance to a Bean Property discusses this example in more detail.

Displaying a Menu Using the selectOneMenu Tag

A UISelectOne component allows the user to select one value from a set of values. This component can be rendered as a list box, a set of radio buttons, or a menu. This section explains the selectOneMenu tag. The selectOneRadio and selectOneListbox tags are written in a similar way. The selectOneListbox tag is similar to the selectOneMenu tag except that selectOneListbox defines a size attribute that determines how many of the items are displayed at once.

The selectOneMenu tag represents a component that contains a list of items, from which a user can choose one item. The menu is also commonly known as a drop-down list or a combo box. The following code snippet shows the selectOneMenu tag from the bookcashier.jsp page of the Duke’s Bookstore application. This tag allows the user to select a shipping method:

<h:selectOneMenu   id="shippingOption"
    required="true"
    value="#{cashier.shippingOption}">
    <f:selectItem
        itemValue="2"
        itemLabel="#{bundle.QuickShip}"/>
    <f:selectItem
        itemValue="5"
        itemLabel="#{bundle.NormalShip}"/>
    <f:selectItem
        itemValue="7"
        itemLabel="#{bundle.SaverShip}"/>
 </h:selectOneMenu>

The value attribute of the selectOneMenu tag maps to the property that holds the currently selected item’s value. You are not required to provide a value for the currently selected item. If you don’t provide a value, the first item in the list is selected by default.

Like the selectOneRadio tag, the selectOneMenu tag must contain either a selectItems tag or a set of selectItem tags for representing the items in the list. The UISelectItem, UISelectItems, and UISelectItemGroup Components explains these tags.