Skip validation on a component when an Ajax request is triggered by that component

Question

I have a p:autoComplete component where I want to show links based on the selected item. A visual example:

To do so, I update a component when the value of the p:autoComplete changes. Part of this is having a p:ajax listener on the clear event. This works great as long as the auto complete component is not required. When it is required, I run into a required validator message which is displayed.

So, I'm trying to skip validation when a request is triggered by the clear event. Inspired by JSF skip Required-Validation without immediate=true, I've tried:

<p:autoComplete required="#{param['javax.faces.source'] ne component.clientId and ...}" ...> <p:ajax event="clear" update="..."/> </p:autoComplete> 

and:

<p:autoComplete required="#{empty param['primefaces.resetvalues'] and ...}" ...> <p:ajax event="clear" update="..." resetValues="true"/> </p:autoComplete> 

but both are not working. Is what I want at all possible? Please note that the component is used as a custom tag, so I cannot hardcode the full clientId.

I'm using JSF 2.3 (bundled with a recent Payara 5).

Answer 1

The ajax event type is passed as request parameter with name of javax.faces.behavior.event.

So this should do:

<p:autoComplete required="#{param['javax.faces.behavior.event'] ne 'clear'}"> 

It's wise to doublecheck if this is invoked on the very component itself else it'll also be skipped when the very ajax event happens to be fired by another component:

<p:autoComplete required="#{not ( param['javax.faces.source'] eq component.clientId and param['javax.faces.behavior.event'] eq 'clear' )}">