UIData Properties

Data components must be bound to one of the backing bean property types listed in Table 9–1. Data components are discussed in Using Data-Bound Table Components. Here is part of the start tag of dataTable from that section:

<h:dataTable id="items"
    ...
    value="#{cart.items}"
    var="item" >

The value expression points to the items property of a shopping cart bean named cart. The cart bean maintains a map of ShoppingCartItem beans.

The getItems method from the cart bean populates a List with ShoppingCartItem instances that are saved in the items map when the customer adds items to the cart, as shown in the following code segment:

public synchronized List getItems() {
    List results = new ArrayList();
    results.addAll(this.items.values());
    return results;
}

All the components contained in the data component are bound to the properties of the cart bean that is bound to the entire data component. For example, here is the h:outputText tag that displays the item name in the table:

<h:commandLink action="#{showcart.details}">
    <h:outputText value="#{item.item.name}"/>
</h:commandLink>