clear jsf form after jpa action

Question

I'm new in jsf and jpa technologies, and trying my first web application with them.

I created a form inside my jsf page which includes all of the table fields. I want to be able to clean all of the inputs inside of the form. (by clicking 'clean' button , or after update/insert/delete action).

Inorder to clean the form I created a new object that all of it's values will be reseted, but my problem now is when i try to leave from this page (by clicking back) i can't because i have a null field ( which has @notNull), and also I'm really not sure that this is the right way to clear the form - does it mean that I need to clear the object also?

what is the write way to clean the form? should it also clear the object,entity fields (beacause the form and object are acually the same)?

This is my code: CustomerDetails.htmlx:

<h:body>
    <h2><h:outputText value="Customer Details"/></h2>
    <h:form>
        <h:panelGrid columns="2" bgcolor="#eff5fa">
            <h:outputLabel value="Customer ID:"/>
            <h:inputText id="customerId" value="#{customer.details.customerId}">
                <f:ajax event="blur"  listener="#{customer.showRecord()}" execute="customerId" render="@all" /> 
            </h:inputText>
            <h:outputLabel value="Customer Name:"/>
            <h:inputText id="customerName" value="#{customer.details.name}"/>
            <h:outputLabel value="Credit Limit:"/>
            <h:inputText id="creditLimit" value="#{customer.details.creditLimit}"/>
            <h:outputLabel value="Discount Code"/>
            <h:selectOneMenu id="discountCode" value="#{customer.details.discount}">
                <f:selectItems value="#{customer.discountCodes}"/>
            </h:selectOneMenu>
            <h:outputLabel value="Email:"/>
            <h:inputText id="email" value="#{customer.details.email}"/>
            <h:outputLabel value="Phone:"/>
            <h:inputText id="phone" value="#{customer.details.phone}"/>
            <h:outputLabel value="Fax:"/>
            <h:inputText id="fax" value="#{customer.details.fax}"/>
            <h:outputLabel value="Address (Line 1):"/>
            <h:inputText id="address1" value="#{customer.details.addressline1}"/>
            <h:outputLabel value="Address (Line 2):"/>
            <h:inputText id="address2" value="#{customer.details.addressline2}"/>
            <h:outputLabel value="State:"/>
            <h:inputText id="state" value="#{customer.details.state}"/>
            <h:outputLabel value="City:"/>
            <h:inputText id="city" value="#{customer.details.city}"/>
            <h:outputLabel value="Zip:"/>
            <h:inputText id="zip" value="#{customer.details.zip}"/>
        </h:panelGrid>                                    
        <h:commandButton value="Clean" id="clean" action="#{customer.clean}"/>             
        <h:commandButton id="back" value="Back" action="#{customer.list}"/>
        <h:commandButton id="update" value="Update" action="#{customer.update}"/>            
        <h:commandButton id="delete" value="Delete" action="#{customer.delete}"/>
    </h:form>
    <p:messages showDetail="true" />
</h:body>

CustomerMBean.java:

public class CustomerMBean {
@EJB
private CustomerSessionBean customerSessionBean;
private Customer customer;

public CustomerMBean() {
}
public List getCustomers()
{
    return customerSessionBean.retrieve();
}
public Customer getDetails()
{
    //Can either do this for simplicity or fetch the details again from the
    //database using the Customer ID        
    return customer;
}  
public Customer showRecord()
{
   Integer test = customer.getCustomerId();
   customer = customerSessionBean.retrieveByCustomer(customer);

   if(customer == null)
   {
       customer = new Customer(test); 
       customer.setDiscount('H');
   }
   return customer;          
}    
public Customer clean()
{
    customer = new Customer();                
    customer.setDiscount('H');
    return customer;        
}    
public String showDetails(Customer customer)
{
    this.customer = customer;
    return "DETAILS";
}
public String update()
{       
    customer = customerSessionBean.update(customer);
    FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
    context.addMessage(null, new FacesMessage(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_INFO,
            "Sucessful", "Record successfully saved!"));
    return "SAVED";
}
public String delete()
{       
    customerSessionBean.delete(customer);
    FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
    context.addMessage(null, new FacesMessage(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_INFO,
            "Sucessful", "Record successfully deleted!"));
    return "DELETE";
}
public String list()
{
    System.out.println("###LIST###");
    return "LIST";
}
public javax.faces.model.SelectItem[] getDiscountCodes()
{
    SelectItem[] options = null;
    List<DiscountCode> discountCodes = customerSessionBean.getDiscountCodes();
    if (discountCodes != null && discountCodes.size() > 0)
    {
        int i = 0;
        options = new SelectItem[discountCodes.size()];
        for (DiscountCode dc : discountCodes)
        {
            options[i++] = new SelectItem(dc.getDiscountCode(),
                    dc.getDiscountCode() + " (" + dc.getRate() + "%)");
        }
    }
    return options;
}

}

Any help will be appriciated..

Thank's In Advance.

Answer 1

Either add immediate="true" to the back button so that all non-immediate inputs will be skipped:

<h:commandButton id="back" value="Back" action="#{customer.list}" immediate="true" />

Or, much better, just make it a normal GET button:

<h:button id="back" value="Back" outcome="list" />

---

Unrelated to the concrete problem, read on about new JSF2 implicit navigation feature. Those ugly uppercased outcome values suggest that you're still using the verbose JSF 1.x way of defining <navigation-case> elements in faces-config.xml.