This is a known problem, and, without alterations to the EL specification isn't resolvable afaik. I know a number of different people have tried to work around it. My suggested way around it, if you are a confident facelets programmer, is to use a Facelets ComponentHandler to build custom UIInput components. If there is interest I'll write up how you do this on the wiki at some point. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4012616#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...