So here's one of those, "why is this different than that?" questions:

Unless I'm mistaken, ui:repeat is not a component and therefore cannot be bound to a backing bean, but -- would it make sense to support something *like* <h:dataTable> in order to support determining the selected row on action events and value change events? A component that would privide a bindable DataModel / List<Object> row access like <h:dataTable>?

My use case is this:

* Managed Bean contains a List of objects
* Each object rendered to screen with input field
* User submits the input field (with a command link or button, etc)
* ManagedBean needs to take action on the appropriate row values

I have a list of objects - I need to render them onto the screen (not necessarily in an HTML table, maybe a <ul> would be nicer) but I can't use <ui:repeat> because each row has a commandLink, and I need to be able to determine which row the user clicked on in order to take the appropriate action.

EL2 helps with this, but... now what if I have a ValueChangeEvent for an input field on each <li> row? Now I can no longer use EL2 to pass the row into the ValueChangeListener, and I would have to use something like <f:setPropertyActionListener> which is not only getting increasingly complicated, but I'd also have to set an attribute insidethe VCL itself, or in a bean VCL knows about - then referencing it - which is terribly ugly. Now try to fit all that into a composite component and it gets really ugly to try attaching tons of VCLs or ALs or SPALs to values inside the component.

Am I attacking this problem in the wrong way? Is this one of those things that has an easy solution I'm not seeing? Or is this a genuine gap?

--Lincoln