commandButton commandLink ajax action listener method not invoked or input value not set updated

Question

Sometimes  when using  lt h commandLink gt    lt h commandButton gt  or  lt f ajax gt   the action  actionListener or listener method associated with the tag are simply not being invoked  Or  the bean properties are not updated with submitted UIInput values   What are the possible causes and solutions for this

User · Answer

I fixed my problem with placing the    lt h commandButton class  btn btn-danger  value    Remove  action    deleteEmployeeBean delete   gt  lt  h commandButton gt    In    lt h form gt        lt h commandButton class  btn btn-danger  value    Remove  action    deleteEmployeeBean delete   gt  lt  h commandButton gt   lt  h form gt

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Introduction Whenever an UICommand component   lt h commandXxx gt    lt p commandXxx gt   etc  fails to invoke the associated action method  or an UIInput component   lt h inputXxx gt    lt p inputXxxx gt   etc  fails to process the submitted values and or update the model values  and you aren t seeing any googlable exceptions and or warnings in the server log  also not when you configure an ajax exception handler as per Exception handling in JSF ajax requests  nor when you set below context parameter in web xml   lt context-param gt       lt param-name gt javax faces PROJECT STAGE lt  param-name gt       lt param-value gt Development lt  param-value gt   lt  context-param gt   and you are also not seeing any googlable errors and or warnings in browser s JavaScript console  press F12 in Chrome Firefox23  IE9  to open the web developer toolset and then open the Console tab   then work through below list of possible causes  Possible causes  UICommand and UIInput components must be placed inside an UIForm component  e g   lt h form gt   and thus not plain HTML  lt form gt    otherwise nothing can be sent to the server  UICommand components must also not have type  quot button quot  attribute  otherwise it will be a dead button which is only useful for JavaScript onclick  See also How to send form input values and invoke a method in JSF bean and  lt h commandButton gt  does not initiate a postback   You cannot nest multiple UIForm components in each other  This is illegal in HTML  The browser behavior is unspecified  Watch out with include files  You can use UIForm components in parallel  but they won t process each other during submit  You should also watch out with  quot God Form quot  antipattern  make sure that you don t unintentionally process validate all other  invisible  inputs in the very same form  e g  having a hidden dialog with required inputs in the very same form   See also How to use  lt h form gt  in JSF page  Single form  Multiple forms  Nested forms    No UIInput value validation conversion error should have occurred  You can use  lt h messages gt  to show any messages which are not shown by any input-specific  lt h message gt  components  Don t forget to include the id of  lt h messages gt  in the  lt f ajax render gt   if any  so that it will be updated as well on ajax requests  See also h messages does not display messages when p commandButton is pressed   If UICommand or UIInput components are placed inside an iterating component like  lt h dataTable gt    lt ui repeat gt   etc  then you need to ensure that exactly the same value of the iterating component is been preserved during the apply request values phase of the form submit request  JSF will reiterate over it to find the clicked link button and submitted input values  Putting the bean in the view scope and or making sure that you load the data model in  PostConstruct of the bean  and thus not in a getter method   should fix it  See also How and when should I load the model from database for h dataTable   If UICommand or UIInput components are included by a dynamic source such as  lt ui include src  quot   bean include  quot  gt   then you need to ensure that exactly the same   bean include  value is preserved during the view build time of the form submit request  JSF will reexecute it during building the component tree  Putting the bean in the view scope and or making sure that you load the data model in  PostConstruct of the bean  and thus not in a getter method   should fix it  See also How to ajax-refresh dynamic include content by navigation menu   JSF SPA    The rendered attribute of the component and all of its parents and the test attribute of any parent  lt c if gt   lt c when gt  should not evaluate to false during the apply request values phase of the form submit request  JSF will recheck it as part of safeguard against tampered hacked requests  Storing the variables responsible for the condition in a  ViewScoped bean or making sure that you re properly preinitializing the condition in  PostConstruct of a  RequestScoped bean should fix it  The same applies to the disabled and readonly attributes of the component  which should not evaluate to true during apply request values phase  See also JSF CommandButton action not invoked  Form submit in conditionally rendered component is not processed  h commandButton is not working once I wrap it in a  lt h panelGroup rendered gt  and Force JSF to process  validate and update readonly disabled input components anyway  The onclick attribute of the UICommand component and the onsubmit attribute of the UIForm component should not return false or cause a JavaScript error  There should in case of  lt h commandLink gt  or  lt f ajax gt  also be no JS errors visible in the browser s JS console  Usually googling the exact error message will already give you the answer  See also Manually adding   loading jQuery with PrimeFaces results in Uncaught TypeErrors   If you re using Ajax via JSF 2 x  lt f ajax gt  or e g  PrimeFaces  lt p commandXxx gt   make sure that you have a  lt h head gt  in the master template instead of the  lt head gt   Otherwise JSF won t be able to auto-include the necessary JavaScript files which contains the Ajax functions  This would result in a JavaScript error like  quot mojarra is not defined quot  or  quot PrimeFaces is not defined quot  in browser s JS console  See also h commandLink actionlistener is not invoked when used with f ajax and ui repeat   If you re using Ajax  and the submitted values end up being null  then make sure that the UIInput and UICommand components of interest are covered by the  lt f ajax execute gt  or e g   lt p commandXxx process gt   otherwise they won t be executed processed  See also Submitted form values not updated in model when adding  lt f ajax gt  to  lt h commandButton gt  and Understanding PrimeFaces process update and JSF f ajax execute render attributes   If the submitted values still end up being null  and you re using CDI to manage beans  then make sure that you import the scope annotation from the correct package  else CDI will default to  Dependent which effectively recreates the bean on every single evaluation of the EL expression  See also  SessionScoped bean looses scope and gets recreated all the time  fields become null and What is the default Managed Bean Scope in a JSF 2 application   If a parent of the  lt h form gt  with the UICommand button is beforehand been rendered updated by an ajax request coming from another form in the same page  then the first action will always fail in JSF 2 2 or older  The second and subsequent actions will work  This is caused by a bug in view state handling which is reported as JSF spec issue 790 and currently fixed in JSF 2 3  For older JSF versions  you need to explicitly specify the ID of the  lt h form gt  in the render of the  lt f ajax gt   See also h commandButton h commandLink does not work on first click  works only on second click   If the  lt h form gt  has enctype  quot multipart form-data quot  set in order to support file uploading  then you need to make sure that you re using at least JSF 2 2  or that the servlet filter who is responsible for parsing multipart form-data requests is properly configured  otherwise the FacesServlet will end up getting no request parameters at all and thus not be able to apply the request values  How to configure such a filter depends on the file upload component being used  For Tomahawk  lt t inputFileUpload gt   check this answer and for PrimeFaces  lt p fileUpload gt   check this answer  Or  if you re actually not uploading a file at all  then remove the attribute altogether   Make sure that the ActionEvent argument of actionListener is an  javax faces event ActionEvent and thus not java awt event ActionEvent  which is what most IDEs suggest as 1st autocomplete option  Having no argument is wrong as well if you use actionListener  quot   bean method  quot   If you don t want an argument in your method  use actionListener  quot   bean method    quot   Or perhaps you actually want to use action instead of actionListener  See also Differences between action and actionListener   Make sure that no PhaseListener or any EventListener in the request-response chain has changed the JSF lifecycle to skip the invoke action phase by for example calling FacesContext renderResponse   or FacesContext responseComplete     Make sure that no Filter or Servlet in the same request-response chain has blocked the request fo the FacesServlet somehow  For example  login security filters such as Spring Security  Particularly in ajax requests that would by default end up with no UI feedback at all  See also Spring Security 4 and PrimeFaces 5 AJAX request handling   If you are using a PrimeFaces  lt p dialog gt  or a  lt p overlayPanel gt   then make sure that they have their own  lt h form gt   Because  these components are by default by JavaScript relocated to end of HTML  lt body gt   So  if they were originally sitting inside a  lt form gt   then they would now not anymore sit in a  lt form gt   See also p commandbutton action doesn  39 t work inside p dialog  Bug in the framework  For example  RichFaces has a  quot conversion error quot  when using a rich calendar UI element with a defaultLabel attribute  or  in some cases  a rich placeholder sub-element   This bug prevents the bean method from being invoked when no value is set for the calendar date  Tracing framework bugs can be accomplished by starting with a simple working example and building the page back up until the bug is discovered    Debugging hints In case you still stucks  it s time to debug  In the client side  press F12 in webbrowser to open the web developer toolset  Click the Console tab so see the JavaScript conosle  It should be free of any JavaScript errors  Below screenshot is an example from Chrome which demonstrates the case of submitting an  lt f ajax gt  enabled button while not having  lt h head gt  declared  as described in point 7 above    Click the Network tab to see the HTTP traffic monitor  Submit the form and investigate if the request headers and form data and the response body are as per expectations  Below screenshot is an example from Chrome which demonstrates a successful ajax submit of a simple form with a single  lt h inputText gt  and a single  lt h commandButton gt  with  lt f ajax execute  quot  form quot  render  quot  form quot  gt     warning  when you post screenshots from HTTP request headers like above from a production environment  then make sure you scramble obfuscate any session cookies in the screenshot to avoid session hijacking attacks   In the server side  make sure that server is started in debug mode  Put a debug breakpoint in a method of the JSF component of interest which you expect to be called during processing the form submit  E g  in case of UICommand component  that would be UICommand queueEvent   and in case of UIInput component  that would be UIInput validate    Just step through the code execution and inspect if the flow and variables are as per expectations  Below screenshot is an example from Eclipse s debugger

User · Answer

If your h commandLink is inside a h dataTable there is another reason why the h commandLink might not work   The underlying data-source which is bound to the h dataTable must also be available in the second JSF-Lifecycle that is triggered when the link is clicked   So if the underlying data-source is request scoped  the h commandLink does not work

User · Answer

This is the solution  which is worked for me    lt p commandButton id  b1  value  Save  process  userGroupSetupForm                      actionListener    userGroupSetupController saveData                          update  growl userGroupList userGroupSetupForm    gt    Here  process  userGroupSetupForm  atrribute is mandatory for Ajax call  actionListener is calling a method from  ViewScope Bean  Also updating growl message  Datatable  userGroupList and Form  userGroupSetupForm

User · Answer

I had lots of fun debugging an issue where a  lt h commandLink gt  s action in richfaces datatable refused to fire  The table used to work at some point but stopped for no apparent reason  I left no stone unturned  only to find out that my rich datatable was using the wrong rowKeyConverter which returned nulls that richfaces happily used as row keys  This prevented my  lt h commandLink gt  action from getting called

User · Answer

I recently ran into a problem with a UICommand not invoking in a JSF 1 2 application using IBM Extended Faces Components   I had a command button on a row of a datatable  the extended version  so  lt hx datatable gt   and the UICommand would not fire from certain rows from the table  the rows that would not fire were the rows greater than the default row display size    I had a drop-down component for selecting number of rows to display  The value backing this field was in RequestScope  The data backing the table itself was in a sort of ViewScope  in reality  temporarily in SessionScope    If the row display was increased via the control which value was also bound to the datatable s rows attribute  none of the rows displayed as a result of this change could fire the UICommand when clicked   Placing this attribute in the same scope as the table data itself fixed the problem   I think this is alluded to in BalusC  4 above  but not only did the table value need to be View or Session scoped but also the attribute controlling the number of rows to display on that table

User · Answer

I had this problem as well and only really started to hone in on the root cause after opening up the browser s web console   Until that  I was unable to get any error messages  even with  lt p messages gt     The web console showed an HTTP 405 status code coming back from the  lt h commandButton type  submit  action    myBean submit   gt    In my case  I have a mix of vanilla HttpServlet s providing OAuth authentication via Auth0 and JSF facelets and beans carrying out my application views and business logic   Once I refactored my web xml  and removed a middle-man-servlet  it then  magically  worked     Bottom line  the problem was that the middle-man-servlet was using RequestDispatcher forward      to redirect from the HttpServlet environment to the JSF environment whereas the servlet being called prior to it was redirecting with HttpServletResponse sendRedirect          Basically  using sendRedirect   allowed the JSF  container  to take control whereas RequestDispatcher forward   was obviously not   What I don t know is why the facelet was able to access the bean properties but could not set them  and this clearly screams for doing away with the mix of servlets and JSF  but I hope this helps someone avoid many hours of head-to-table-banging

User · Answer

I would mention one more thing that concerns Primefaces s p commandButton   When you use a p commandButton for the action that needs to be done on the server  you can not use type  button  because that is for Push buttons which are used to execute custom javascript without causing an ajax non-ajax request to the server   For this purpose  you can dispense the type attribute  default value is  submit   or you can explicitly use type  submit    Hope this will help someone

User · Answer

lt ui composition gt       lt h form id  form1  gt       lt p dialog id  dialog1  gt         lt p commandButton value  Save  action    bean method1     gt   lt  --Working-- gt       lt  p dialog gt     lt  h form gt      lt h form id  form2  gt       lt p dialog id  dialog2  gt         lt p commandButton value  Save  action    bean method2     gt   lt  --Not Working-- gt       lt  p dialog gt     lt  h form gt   lt  ui composition gt    To solve    lt ui composition gt       lt h form id  form1  gt       lt p dialog id  dialog1  gt         lt p commandButton value  Save  action    bean method1     gt     lt  -- Working  -- gt       lt  p dialog gt        lt p dialog id  dialog2  gt         lt p commandButton value  Save  action    bean method2     gt     lt  --Working  -- gt       lt  p dialog gt     lt  h form gt     lt h form id  form2  gt       lt  --             -- gt     lt  h form gt   lt  ui composition gt

User · Answer

Got stuck with this issue myself and found one more cause for this problem  If you don t have setter methods in your backing bean for the properties used in your   xhtml   then the action is simply not invoked

User · Answer

While my answer isn t 100  applicable  but most search engines find this as the first hit  I decided to post it nontheless   If you re using PrimeFaces  or some similar API  p commandButton or p commandLink  chances are that you have forgotten to explicitly add process   this  to your command components   As the PrimeFaces User s Guide states in section 3 18  the defaults for process and update are both  form  which pretty much opposes the defaults you might expect from plain JSF f ajax or RichFaces  which are execute   this  and render   none  respectively   Just took me a looong time to find out       and I think it s rather unclever to use defaults that are different from JSF

User · Answer

One more possibility  if the symptom is that the first invocation works  but subsequent ones do not  you may be using PrimeFaces 3 x with JSF 2 2  as detailed here  No ViewState is sent

[jsf] commandButton/commandLink/ajax action/listener method not invoked or input value not set/updated

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