primefaces dataTable multiple selection using List instead of Array

Question

i want to obtain this:

<h:form id="form">

    <p:dataTable value="#{testBean.allItems}" var="item" selection="#{testBean.category.itemList}" selectionMode="multiple">
        <p:column>#{item.name}</p:column>
    </p:dataTable>

</h:form>

where

@ManagedBean
public class TestBean
{
    private static List<Item> itemDB = new ArrayList<Item>();
    static
    {
        itemDB.add(new Item("zero"));
        itemDB.add(new Item("one"));
        itemDB.add(new Item("two"));
        itemDB.add(new Item("three"));
        itemDB.add(new Item("four"));
        itemDB.add(new Item("five"));
    }

    private Category category;

    @PostConstruct
    public void init()
    {
        category = new Category();
        category.setName("root");
        category.getItemList().add(itemDB.get(2));
        category.getItemList().add(itemDB.get(3));
    }

    public List<Item> getAllItems()
    {
        return itemDB;
    }

    public Category getCategory()
    {
        return category;
    }

    public void setCategory(Category category)
    {
        this.category = category;
    }
}

i think my choices are:

1. create a sort of translator from List to Array and vice versa, but i'm having a headeache about make it work with ValueExpressions...
2. extend PrimeFaces DataTable and DataTableRenderer but it can be a real pain to figure out

any better idea?

Answer 1

i've extended primefaces DataTable with my own class.

Answer 2

The Collections-API has some relatively simple methods for this case.

Item[] itemArr = itemDB.toArray(new Item[0]);

and

itemDB = Arrays.asList(itemArr);

Answer 3

This is how I'm doing it. I haven't done a lot of testing with it so far, but it does appear to work. I think a patch to Primefaces is probably a better solution.

Here's the list methods I wanted to use:

   public List<R> getSelectionRecordList() {
        return selectionItems;
    }

    public void setSelectionRecordList(List<R> selectionItems) {
        this.selectionItems = selectionItems;
    }

Here's the two extra array methods I added to access that list.

       public R[] getSelectionRecordArray() {
           if (null == selectionItems) {
               return null;
           }
            return (R[]) selectionItems.toArray();
        }

        public void setSelectionRecordArray(R[] selectionArray) {
            if (null == selectionArray || selectionArray.length == 0) {
                selectionItems = null;
            } else {
                selectionItems = new ArrayList<R>(selectionArray.length);
                for (R record : selectionArray) {
                    this.selectionItems.add(record);
                }
            }
        }