Calling Multiple Listeners in JSF

By: Daniel Malcolm

There may be situations in which you want multiple value change listeners or multiple action listeners to respond to an event. In that case, you need a slightly different syntax to attach the listeners to the JSF element.

While using Action Listener, a value is attached to a change listener or an action listener to a
JSF element by using the valueChangeListener or actionListener attributes. When using the attribute syntax, you use a method-binding expression to bind a method as a listener. However, this works only when attaching a single listener.

When you need to attach multiple listeners, there is a JSF tag for value change listeners and one for action listeners that can be used to attach one or more listeners to an element. When using the tag syntax, you will be specifying a class that implements a listener interface. For value change listeners, the tag is <f:valueChangeListener>, with an attribute named type that is the class name of the listener. The interface that the listener must implement is javax.faces.event.ValueChangeListener. It has a single method that must be implemented:

void processValueChangeEvent(ValueChangeEvent);

So, if we assume that the FlightSearch and FlightTypes classes both implement ValueChangeListener, we could attach both of them to an element like this:

<h:selectOneRadio layout="lineDirection"
value="#{flight.tripType}"
onclick="submit()"
immediate="true">
<f:valueChangeListener type="com.apress.projsp.FlightSearch"/>
<f:valueChangeListener type="com.apress.projsp.FlightTypes"/>
<f:selectItems value="#{types.tripTypes}"/>
</h:selectOneRadio>

For action listeners, the tag is <f:actionListener>, with an attribute named type that is the class name of the listener. The interface that the listener must implement is javax.faces.event.ActionListener. It has a single method that must be implemented:

void processAction(ActionEvent);

If we assume that the FlightSearch and FlightTypes classes both implement ActionListener, we could attach both of them to an element, like this:

<h:commandButton value="Search"
action="#{flight.search}">
<f:actionListener type="com.apress.projsp.FlightSearch"/>
<f:actionListener type="com.apress.projsp.FlightTypes"/>
</h:commandButton>

In either of the two preceding examples, both listeners will be called at the appropriate time to respond to the event. If any listeners are attached by using attribute syntax, they will be called first. Then any listeners attached by using tag syntax will be called, in order of declaration.