JSF 2.x Conditional error messages

To conditionally show a Twitter Bootstrap styled DIV with a list of error messages, use the rendered property on panelGroup to check whether messageList has messages to be displayed, and if so, render the enclosed content.

layout=”block” displays the output as a DIV, and row is one of the Bootstrap classes for row display.

<div class="span12 alert alert-danger"></div>

Set messages to display from your Backing Bean with:

FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().addMessage(null, new FacesMessage("your message");

Fixing JSF Radio Button layout when using Twitter Bootstrap

Twitter Bootstrap adds ‘display:block’ to labels by default, which oddly affects the way radio buttons are displayed if renderd using JSF – the label drops down to the next line.

To work around this, add a class using styleClass to the <h:selectOneRadio> tag, and then use some additional CSS to set display back to ‘inline’ for labels within an element using the class you used on the selectOneRadio tag.

Here’s some example CSS:

.inlineRadioButtons {
}

.inlineRadioButtons label {
    display: inline;
}

And here’s it used on some JSF generating radio buttons:

<h:form>
    <h:panelGrid columns="2">
    <h:outputText value="Color:" />
    <h:selectOneRadio value="#{testBean.selectedColor}"
        styleClass="inlineRadioButtons">
        <f:selectItems value="#{testBean.colors}" var="#{item}"
            itemValue="#{item}" itemLabel="#{item.desc}"></f:selectItems>
    </h:selectOneRadio>
    </h:panelGrid>
    <h:commandButton action="#{testBean.save}" value="Save" styleClass="btn btn-primary"/>
</h:form>