MySQL YEAR field - how to input from jsf

Question

The tools created this field in the entity:

@Entity
@Table(name = "movies")
public class Movie implements Serializable {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private int idmovie;
    // etc
    @Temporal(TemporalType.DATE)
    @Column(name = "year_of_release")
    @Past(message = "Back from the future ?") // added by me
    @NotNull(message = "Please enter the year of the movie") // added by me
    private Date yearOfRelease;
}

I want to enter the year from a form - I can't find anything that produces a year drop down and that converts it to an YEAR field (getting Data truncation exceptions).

The closest I got :

<h:outputLabel for="yearOfRelease">Year of release</h:outputLabel>
<h:inputText id="yearOfRelease"
    value="#{movieController.movie.yearOfRelease}" redisplay="true"
    converterMessage="Please enter date in yyyy-MM-dd format">
    <f:convertDateTime pattern="yyyy-MM-dd" />
</h:inputText>
<h:message id="yearOfReleaseMessage" for="yearOfRelease" />

Do not seem to find a converter to tell jsf to convert to year.

Is integer my only option ?

Also ideally I would like a dropdown. I found things like

<h:selectOneListbox value="#{form.year}" size="5">
    <f:selectItem itemValue="1900" itemLabel="1900"/>
    <f:selectItem itemValue="1901" itemLabel="1901"/> ... </h:selectOneListbox>

but surely there is a way to have this automated ?

I am new to JSF and I'd rather stay vanilla JavaEE (no faces libraries). I am on glassfish 4.

Partial answer

// YEAR
private static final short MIN_YEAR = 1901;
private static final short MAX_YEAR = 2014; // (short) new
// java.util.Date().getYear(); // does not play with message
private static final List<Short> YEARS = new ArrayList<>(MAX_YEAR
    - MIN_YEAR + 1);
static {
    for (short i = MIN_YEAR; i <= MAX_YEAR; ++i) {
        YEARS.add(i);
    }
}
private static final String MIN_MSG = "Min release year: " + MIN_YEAR;
private static final String MAX_MSG = "Max release year: " + MAX_YEAR;
@Column(name = "year_of_release")
@NotNull(message = "Please enter the year of release of the movie")
@Min(value = 1901, message = MIN_MSG)
@Max(value = 2014, message = MAX_MSG)
private short yearOfRelease = 2014;

public List<Short> getYears() {
    return YEARS;
}

And in the form:

<h:selectOneListbox id="yearOfRelease" redisplay="true"
    value="#{movieController.movie.yearOfRelease}" size="8">
    <f:selectItems value="#{movieController.movie.years}" var="entry"
        itemValue="#{entry}" itemLabel="#{entry}" />
    <f:ajax event="blur" render="yearOfReleaseMessage" />
</h:selectOneListbox>

If someone can come up with something more elegant (like some ready made Year dropdown that validates @Past and converts to something nice for a MySQL Year datatype) I would gladly accept it.

Answer 1

You can declare <f:selectItems /> and fill it with values from the bean, so something like

@RequestScoped
@ManagedBean
public class Form {

    private List<String> items = new ArrayList<>();

    @PostConstruct
    public void init() {
        for(int i=1900;i<2000;i++) {
            items.add(i);
        }
    }

    public List<String> getItems() {
        return items;
    }
}

and then in your page

<h:selectOneListbox value="#{form.year}" size="5">
    <f:selectItems value="#{form.items}" var="entry"
       itemValue="#{entry}" itemLabel="#{entry}" />
</h:selectOneListbox>