On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Drayton Brown <draytonbrown_at_gmail.com>wrote:
> So I guess the sort of information I'm looking for is
> 1) Are there any other reasons for defining a datatable using columns
> besides the limitations on the foreach core component?
>
I'm speculating here, but the answer is almost certainly yes as the
dataTable component pre-dates the ability to make custom components by
composition, which was introduced in JSF 2.0.
For my money, the way that dataTable is implemented/designed is a natural
outgrowth of the way tables are specified in HTML.
> 2) If the answer the question 1 is no, then were there any reasons for not
> developing a new data iterator which returned subsets of data?
>
I imagine the answer here is that there is no perceived need for it. I'm
not seeing the connection between such functionality and clickable rows.
Furthermore you could write your own implementation of DataModel which might
get you what you need, but I'm not really sure what that is, so maybe not.
>
> I've checked out the JSF code from SVN, and I've been looking at the
> foreach component code (although I cannot get it to compile yet).
> I was thinking of implementing a ForEachSet component, but I do not want to
> get into it if there are other reasons for not doing it.
>
>