I have an <a4j:commandLink> in a <rich:datatable>. The same problem applies to <a4j:commandButton> and <a4j:repeat>. The bean action specified was not executed, and the <a4j:actionparam> values were not bound.

For example this was not working:

<a4j:form>
   <rich:dataTable id="searchResults" value="#{myBean.searchResults}" var="item">
            <rich:column>
               <a4j:commandLink value="#{item.code}" action="#{myBean.myAction}"
                reRender="myRegion">
                    <a4j:actionparam name="code" value="#{item.code}"
                     assignTo="#{myBean.selectedCode}"/>
                </a4j:commandLink>
              </rich:column>
   </rich:dataTable>
</a4j:form>

The region was getting rerendered, but myBean.myAction was not executed.

Then I tried moving the <a4j:form> inside the table, so there was a form on each row:

   <rich:dataTable id="searchResults" value="#{myBean.searchResults}" var="item">
      <rich:column>
              <a4j:form>
               <a4j:commandLink value="#{item.code}" action="#{myBean.myAction}"
                reRender="myRegion">
                    <a4j:actionparam name="code" value="#{item.code}"
                     assignTo="#{myBean.selectedCode}"/>
                </a4j:commandLink>
                </a4j:form>
              </rich:column>
   </rich:dataTable>

This seemed to work for the first row, but not any subsequent ones.

The answer seems to be to base the dataTable on a session scoped bean. I didn’t want my orignal bean session scoped, so I split it into two like this:

 <rich:dataTable id="searchResults" value="#{mySessionBean.searchResults}" var="item">
      <rich:column>
              <a4j:form>
               <a4j:commandLink value="#{item.code}" action="#{myBean.myAction}"
                reRender="myRegion">
                    <a4j:actionparam name="code" value="#{item.code}"
                     assignTo="#{myBean.selectedCode}"/>
                </a4j:commandLink>
                </a4j:form>
              </rich:column>
   </rich:dataTable>

And it works. The actions are still carried out on my request bean as I wanted and I just have to be careful about how I update the session bean.

I wanted to display the data from a Map using a rich:datatable. You can do this by using an array of the Map keys as the value for the table, and then using this to access the rest of the data in the Map.

Here is the java:

public Map<Integer,MyObject> getItems() {
   return items;
}
public List<Integer> getItemKeys() {
   List keys = new ArrayList();
   keys.addAll(getItems().keySet());
   return keys;
}

and here is the JSF:

<rich:dataTable value="#{myBean.itemKeys}" var="key" >
   <rich:column>
      <h:outputText value="#{myBean.items[key].myObjProperty}"/>
   </rich:column>
</rich:dataTable>

Obviously somewhat simplified but I think this shows how to do it!