This struggle makes me often use a lot of extra (evening) time trying to find out how to do something the Java way. And this occasion was no exception.
Lately I have been working on an XPage which had a combobox for selecting between last year, current year or next year. All of course Integer values. Since hard coding values is not allowed (really, it isn't!) I had to generate values by code.
And here's the code:
package no.inforte.test;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.List;
import javax.faces.model.SelectItem;
public class YearBean implements Serializable {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
public List<SelectItem> getYears() {
int thisYear = Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.YEAR);
List<SelectItem> selectItems = new ArrayList<SelectItem>();
selectItems.add(new SelectItem(new Integer(thisYear - 1), new Integer(thisYear - 1).toString()));
selectItems.add(new SelectItem(new Integer(thisYear), new Integer(thisYear).toString()));
selectItems.add(new SelectItem(new Integer(thisYear + 1), new Integer(thisYear + 1).toString()));
return selectItems;
}
}
And an excerpt from my xpage showing how to access the values using Expression Language (EL):
<xp:comboBox
id="comboYear"
value="#{yearBean.currentYear}"
style="width:100%">
<xp:selectItems>
<xp:this.value><![CDATA[${javascript:yearBean.years}]]></xp:this.value>
</xp:selectItems>
<xp:this.converter>
<xp:convertNumber
type="number"
integerOnly="true">
</xp:convertNumber>
</xp:this.converter>
</xp:comboBox>
The page shows up perfectly and 2013, 2014 and 2015 are available for selection.
Pick one and submit: Boom! Error! (what the...)
How come I get "Validation Error: Value is not valid"?
I started digging for documentation on what kind of values the <xp:selectitems> expect.
The help file itself was of no use. It simply explains how to "pipe-separated" strings for values...
But:
OpenNTF has released a XPages Control Documentation as part of the XPages Extension Library.
There is also a Domino Designer javadoc describing all the classes backing XPages.
Trying to squeeze out what was the problem with my page from this information however did only partly succeed. Neither did a Google search...
Suddenly (and I don't know how) it came to me that perhaps the number converter <xp:NumberConverter> really expects something floating-point-ish...
I changed my code accordingly:
package no.inforte.test;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.List;
import javax.faces.model.SelectItem;
public class YearBean implements Serializable {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
public List<SelectItem> getYears() {
int thisYear = Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.YEAR);
List<SelectItem> selectItems = new ArrayList<SelectItem>();
selectItems.add(new SelectItem(new Double(thisYear - 1), new Integer(thisYear - 1).toString()));
selectItems.add(new SelectItem(new Double(thisYear), new Integer(thisYear).toString()));
selectItems.add(new SelectItem(new Double(thisYear + 1), new Integer(thisYear + 1).toString()));
return selectItems;
}
}
Note! The only change is that the SelectItem is now equipped with Double values.
And voila! Now it works without the validation error! :-)
