PlanetNTF

This weekend I stumbled over a bug of the DateTimeHelper: If the value of the field is empty, no actions and/or action listeners connected with a managed bean will be executed anymore.

Here is an example of a small XPage to illustrate the problem:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xp:view xmlns:xp="http://www.ibm.com/xsp/core">
 
    <xp:label 
        value="#{javascript:java.lang.System.currentTimeMillis()}" id="labelNow" />

     <xp:inputText id="inputTextDT" value="#{myBean.valueDT}">
         <xp:this.converter>
             <xp:convertDateTime type="date" />
         </xp:this.converter>
         <xp:dateTimeHelper />
     </xp:inputText>

    <xp:button id="button" value="OK">
        <xp:eventHandler
            event="onclick"
            submit="true"
            refreshMode="partial"
            refreshId="labelNow"
            actionListener="#{myBean.action}" />
     </xp:button>

</xp:view>

It does not matter if you set the disableValidators property for the text field to true, even an immediate=true won’t help here. The reason for the problem is that the renderer of the dateTimeHelper always uses the attached converter and fails with a null pointer exception if the value is empty (this infringes the JSF specification, but IBM has implemented it this way).

The workaround for this problem is to overwrite the existing renderer class and handle the NPE by yourself:

package ch.hasselba.xpages.renderer;

import javax.faces.component.UIComponent;
import javax.faces.context.FacesContext;
import javax.faces.convert.ConverterException;
public class DateTimeHelperRenderer
    extends com.ibm.xsp.renderkit.dojo.DateTimeHelperRenderer{

    public Object getConvertedValue(FacesContext fc, UIComponent uiComponent, Object obj)
        throws ConverterException  {

          Object result = super.getConvertedValue(fc, uiComponent, obj);

          if( result == null )
            return new Object();

          return result;
    }
}

The renderer must now be registered in faces-config.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<faces-config>
  <render-kit>
    <renderer>
      <component-family>javax.faces.Input</component-family>
      <renderer-type>com.ibm.xsp.DateTimeHelper</renderer-type>
      <renderer-class>ch.hasselba.xpages.renderer.DateTimeHelperRenderer</renderer-class>
    </renderer>
  </render-kit>
</faces-config>

Now the problem is solved, the managed bean’s action get executed even if the value is empty.