JSF 2.3 new feature: registrable DataModels
Iterating components in JSF such as h:dataTable and ui:repeat have the DataModel class as their native input type. Other datatypes such as List are supported, but these are handled by build-in wrappers; e.g. an application provided List is wrapped into a ListDataModel . While JSF has steadily expanded the number of build-in wrappers and JSF 2.3 has provided new ones for Map and Iterable , a long standing request is for users (or libraries) to be able to register their own wrappers. JSF 2.3 will now (finally) let users do this. The way this is done is by creating a wrapper DataModel for a specific type, just as one may have done years ago when returning data from a backing bean, and then annotating it with the new @FacesDataModel annotation. A “forClass” attribute has to be specified on this annotation that designates the type this wrapper is able to handle. The following gives an abbreviated example of this: @FacesDataModel(forClass = MyCollection.class) public class M