How to set h:selectOneMenu label as value?

Question

I'm using h:selectOneMenu and I want to get not the ID value, but the label. In the backing bean I create SelectItem objects which are taken for loading the h:selectOneMenu.

new SelectItem("id", "label");

My view code:

<h:selectOneMenu value="#{Metadata.thema}">
    <f:selectItems value="#{ThemaBean.themes}" /> 
    <f:valueChangeListener type="com.schober.events.SelectThemaEvent" />
</h:selectOneMenu>

The code here sets Metadata.thema with the "id", but I need to set the "label". I tried with label="#{Metadata.thema}" but it does not work for me.

Answer 1

Then just use the label as value. Use the SelectItem constructor taking a single argument instead:

new SelectItem("label");

This way the label will be used as both item value and item label.

---

Update you seem to have misphrased the question and actually want to get both. In that case, just hold a Map of ID-label value pairs yourself and get the label from the map by the selected ID.

private Map<Long, String> themaIdsAndLabels = new HashMap<Long, String>();

// ...

public void submit() {
    String themaLabel = themaIdsAndLabels.get(thema);
    // ...
}

You can reuse this Map to generate list of SelectItems or even more, if you're using JSF 2.0 and EL 2.2 you can also use that map straight inside <f:selectItems> without the need to copy it into List<SelectItem>.

<f:selectItems value="#{bean.themaIdsAndLabels.entrySet()}" var="entry" itemValue="#{entry.key}" itemLabel="#{entry.value}" />

Or if your sole intent is to redisplay the label in an output text, you can also just use

<h:outputText value="#{bean.themaIdsAndLabels[bean.thema]}" />