Composite Buttons

This article will describe how to create a Composite button that executes a method on a backing bean that is passed in from the custom tag.

See Creating Custom EL Functions as a starting point

Create another xml called META-INF/compositions.taglib.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE facelet-taglib PUBLIC
"-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Facelet Taglib 1.0//EN"
"facelet-taglib_1_0.dtd">
<facelet-taglib>
    <namespace>http://enhancements.seam/jsf</namespace>
    <tag>
        <tag-name>button</tag-name>
        <source>../layout/enhancements/button.xhtml</source>
    </tag>
</facelet-taglib>

Add that to your web.xml

<context-param>
    <param-name>facelets.LIBRARIES</param-name>
    <param-value>
        /META-INF/elfunctions.taglib.xml; compositions.taglib.xml
    </param-value>
</context-param>

Create the button.xhtml in WebContent/layout/enhancements (JBDS) or view/layout/enhancements (seam-gen) :

<ui:composition  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
		 xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
		 xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
		 xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
		 xmlns:s="http://jboss.com/products/seam/taglib"
		 xmlns:rich="http://richfaces.org/rich"
		 xmlns:a="http://richfaces.org/a4j"
		 xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core">
    
    <h:commandButton value="#{value}" action="#{backingBean[method]}" />
	 
</ui:composition>

Create a Seam JavaBean we can play around with TestAction.java:

@Name("TestAction")
public class TestAction {
	
    @Logger private Log log;
	
    public void submit() {
    	log.info("TestAction:submit()");
    }
	
}

Now in your view/ or WebContent/ folder create test.xhtml

<ui:composition xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
                xmlns:s="http://jboss.com/products/seam/taglib"
                xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
                xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
                xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
                xmlns:rich="http://richfaces.org/rich"
                xmlns:custom="http://enhancements.seam/jsf"
                template="layout/template.xhtml">

	<ui:define name="body">
		<h:form>
			<custom:button value="Submit" backingBean="#{TestAction}" method="submit" />
		</h:form>
	</ui:define> 
	
</ui:composition>

Navigate to test.seam, the output of clicking the button will be:

INFO  [TestAction] TestAction:submit()