Using the f:selectItem and f:selectItems Tags

The f:selectItem and f:selectItems tags represent components that can be nested inside a component that allows you to select one or multiple items. An f:selectItem tag contains the value, label, and description of a single item. An f:selectItems tag contains the values, labels, and descriptions of the entire list of items.

You can use either a set of f:selectItem tags or a single f:selectItems tag within your component tag.

The advantages of using the f:selectItems tag are as follows.

• Items can be represented by using different data structures, including Array, Map, and Collection. The value of the f:selectItems tag can represent even a generic collection of POJOs.

• Different lists can be concatenated into a single component, and the lists can be grouped within the component.

• Values can be generated dynamically at runtime.

The advantages of using f:selectItem are as follows:

• Items in the list can be defined from the page.

• Less code is needed in the bean for the selectItem properties.

The rest of this section shows you how to use the f:selectItems and f:selectItem tags.

Using the f:selectItems Tag

The following example from Displaying Components for Selecting Multiple Values shows how to use the h:selectManyCheckbox tag:

<h:selectManyCheckbox
    id="newsletters"
    layout="pageDirection"
    value="#{cashier.newsletters}">
    <f:selectItems
        value="#{newsletters}"/>
</h:selectManyCheckbox>

The value attribute of the f:selectItems tag is bound to the backing bean newsletters.

You can also create the list of items programmatically in the backing bean. See Writing Bean Properties for information on how to write a backing bean property for one of these tags.

Using the f:selectItem Tag

The f:selectItem tag represents a single item in a list of items. Here is the example from Displaying a Menu Using the h:selectOneMenu Tag once again:

<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 itemValue attribute represents the default value for the selectItem tag. The itemLabel attribute represents the String that appears in the drop-down menu component on the page.

The itemValue and itemLabel attributes are value-binding-enabled, meaning that they can use value-binding expressions to refer to values in external objects. These attributes can also define literal values, as shown in the example h:selectOneMenu tag.