<a4j:commandLink> action not fired inside <form>

Question

I am working on an enhancement project. There is a parent <form> element. I have an XHTML file included inside this parent form. The included XHTML file has an <a4j:commandLink>. This action is not getting called. Now, this will work if i wrap the <a4j:commandLink> inside an <h:form>. This way, the parent form's action is called as well as the <a4j:commandLink>'s action. But nesting forms is not encouraged. I can't use the parent form's action because it goes to a servlet and my action is in a request scoped bean. I cant access the bean in the servlet. Any help on how to make the action call without the <h:form> is highly appreciated. Here is how it looks like:

    <form id="parentFormId" name="parentFormId" action="aservletaction">
      <a4j:outputPanel id="includedRegion">

        <ui:include src="setupView.xhtml"></ui:include>
     </a4j:outputPanel>
   </form>

Contents of setupView.xhtml:

<ui:composition>
   <a4j:outputPanel>
        <h:form>
        <a4j:commandLink action="#{myBean.actionMethod}"
          render="adatatableid" limitRender="true"/>
        </h:form>
</ui:composition>

Answer 1

RichFaces components have to be inside a form otherwise they won't work (at least the executable ones).

Now, <a4j:commandLink> (and commandButton) executing the whole form is the default behaviour, to change it use the execute attribute:

<a4j:commandLink execute="@this" … >

This will limit the execution only to the link.

Answer 2

It ought not work. Do not nest forms, as its not legal in HTML in general and in HTML code rendered by JSF in particular. So, you've got a following construct in your code:

<form>
    ...
    <h:form>
        ...
    </h:form>
    ...
</form>

Get rid if it and it'll work as expected, i.e. by creating a plain form-to-form structure.