As a refresher, we have introduced a special facet in JSF 2 called the metadata facet. This facet is built during an initial request, prior to when the remainder of the view is created and built. So far the only officially recognized child components are UIViewParameters, which map HTTP request parameters onto model values and export these values back to bookmarkable and redirect URLs.<br>
<br>My expectation is that frameworks creators are going to want to make use of the metadata facet to host other components oriented towards the initial request. For instance, in Seam we want to prototype view actions for JSF 2.1 and also define security restrictions on the page. Currently, however, the ViewMetadata only offers a single method for access the contents of the metadata facet:<br>
<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Collection&lt;UIViewParameter&gt; ViewMetadata#getViewParameters(UIViewRoot)</span><br><br>This method simply advances to the metadata facet and iterates its children looking for UIViewParameter components.<br>
<br>I&#39;m concerned that the ViewMetadata does not offer a convenience method for accessing general contents of the metadata facet. I have two proposed methods, one of which I think we definitely need to provide.<br><br>
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Collection&lt;UIComponent&gt; ViewMetadata#getChildComponents(UIViewRoot)</span><br><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Collection&lt;UIComponent&gt; ViewMetadata#getChildComponents(UIViewRoot, Class&lt;? extends UIComponent&gt;[]);</span><br>
<br>Feel free to suggest alternate signatures. As it is now, I can see everyone wanting to extend this feature as needing to provide a utility method to extract the contents.<br><br>I also think the term &quot;view parameter&quot; should be removed from the JavaDoc &quot;ViewMetadata is reponsible for extracting and providing <span style="background-color: rgb(192, 192, 192);">view parameter</span> metadata from VDL views&quot; to make it clear that any metadata can be supported. Perhaps just cite that the only recognized metadata are view parameters.<br>
<br>-Dan<br><br>-- <br>Dan Allen<br>Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat | Author of Seam in Action<br><br><a href="http://mojavelinux.com">http://mojavelinux.com</a><br><a href="http://mojavelinux.com/seaminaction">http://mojavelinux.com/seaminaction</a><br>
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