Shay Shmeltzer's Weblog

Someone asked this on the OTN forum:
Create an JSF page with an ADF Form and a Create button - now when you run it - you first have to click the create button to get an empty record in the screen that you can insert data into.
The question is how do I get the form to load up with an empty record.

Here is a trick that will do it.
Go to your JSF page's pagedef.xml file and look in the structure pane - you'll see this:

Notice that you have a binding already in place for the Create action.
Next add an invokeAction executable BEFORE the iterator executable.

In the dialog that pop-up specify a name for the binding - and then specify the Create operation.

Now when you'll run the page you'll get an empty record ready for you to work on.

[small update based on some comments]

However, if you'll run the page now you'll see that after you press commit - another new record is created. This is because the action is being executed again after the postback.

The solution for this is to restrict the execution of the method through the refresh condition of the action in the pagedef.
You set it to be ${!adfFacesContext.postback}

You also need to set the Refresh property to be renderModel (see chapter 10.5.5.3 in the ADF Developer Guide)

Now run the page and you'll get an empty form when you start and after you press commit there is no additional insert.

Now that you have the understanding of how this technique works behind the scene, I should probably mention that there is a simpler way to create this form.

In your first step, instead of dropping the view as an ADF Form drop it as an "ADF Creation Form".
When you look at the code that was created you'll see the same thing we have created manually in this blog :-)