Passing parameters with h:commandButton — or the equivalent

Question

I read on other threads that this does not work:

   &l         


        

Answer 1

This should work perfectly fine on JSF 2.x. Did you ever try it yourself? If it doesn't work, then you're either actually using JSF 1.x or you're sending a redirect after POST.

The other threads which you're referring to were undoubtely talking about JSF 1.x, when the <f:param> was indeed not supported on <h:commandButton>. On JSF 1.x, you would have used <f:setPropertyActionListener> instead or some shot of CSS to style the <h:commandLink> to look like a button.

E.g.

<h:commandLink styleClass="button" ...>

with

a.button {
    display: inline-block;
    background: lightgray;
    border: 1px outset lightgray;
    outline: none;
    color: black;
    text-decoration: none;
    cursor: default;
}
a.button:active {
    border-style: inset;
}

Note that in JSF 2.x you've also the opportunity to use the new <h:button> which fires a GET request instead of a POST request. This is better if you don't need to execute any bean action (i.e. your current action is just returning a plain navigation case outcome) and want the request to be idempotent.

<h:button value="Create New Account" outcome="create">
    <f:param name="acctName" value="#{acctBean.handle}" />
    <f:param name="acctNo" value="#{acctBean.id}" />
</h:button>

This will navigate to create.xhtml with the given parameters in request URL.