No Validation inside cellEditor?

[DerIngo]

I have this simple DataTable:

        <p:dataTable value="#{testView.list}" var="item" editable="true" editMode="cell">
          <p:column width="100" headerText="Name">
            <p:cellEditor>
              <f:facet name="output">
                <h:outputText value="Name: #{item.name}" />
              </f:facet>
              <f:facet name="input">
                <p:inputText value="#{item.name}" required="true"></p:inputText>
              </f:facet>
            </p:cellEditor>
          </p:column>
        </p:dataTable>
        <p:commandButton value="Test" action="#{testView.action}" />
      </h:form>

Even when item.name is NULL, the commandButton executes testView.action.
I expected validation to fail BEFORE the action method of the commandButton is executed.

Here is my primefaces-test fork.
You can execute the sample with mvn jetty:run command and hit http://localhost:8080/ to run the page.

[melloware]

I think this has been asked before. When you click the button its executing first. To get in front of it add a blur event that updates the @form to your input like this.

<p:inputText value="#{item.name}" required="true"><p:ajax event="blur" process="@this" update="@form"/></p:inputText>

[DerIngo]

I have added the blur event as suggested, but it makes no difference: I can still press the button and the action is executed.

I assume the problem is something like:
The page is loaded and displays all the <f:facet name="output">-blocks.
So no <f:facet name="input">-block is in the DOM when the button is clicked and so there is no validation of this "not existing" inputs.

[melloware]

Correct.

[DerIngo]

So i would consider this as a bug. And a bug should be fixed.
But I am afraid, the fix would be very complex (with possible sideeffects?). And it seems, that nearly no one else has this problem, which really surprises me. So I guess, this issue will not get high priority the next years.

Any better idea for a workaraound, than validating in the action method?

    public String action() {
        FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
        boolean validationFailed = false;
        
        // Check if any inputText in the dataTable has invalid value
        for (TestObject testObject : list) {
            if (testObject.getName() == null || testObject.getName().isEmpty()) {
                context.addMessage(null, new FacesMessage(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_ERROR, "Validation Error", "Name is required."));
                validationFailed = true;
            }
        }
        
        // If validation failed, return null to stay on the same page
        if (validationFailed) {
            return null;
        }        
        
        // validation passed, go on with business logic

    }

[melloware]

Yes CellEditor has always been quite odd. I think most people have chosen not to use it and instead use the Row Editing feature instead which seems to have much less issues because it forces you to "commit" the row before moving on.

[bdonauba]

I just stumbled across this limitation. I guess it is the same reason why my bean validation does not work along with <p:datatable> and cell edit mode.

I have several NotEmpty annotated fields in my entity beans. If I don't fill this input fields I normally get a validation error with messages in <p:message>. In case of <p:cellEditor> I do not get any validation error in the "process validation" phase, but later when JPA tries to persist the entity it throws an exception that is shown in the browser and logs.

I think this behaviour should be clearly and bold stated in <p:datatable> documentation. It took my some time till I found this post making it clear that this is a primefaces limitation not a error in my code.