apex:commandButton in visualforce component does not call controller method

Question

I have a commandButton in a visualforce component. The expected behavior is that the controller method would be called. The page is refreshed, but the method registered in the commandButton {!performUnlinkContact} is not called. The strange thing is that if I put the button on the base visualforce page, it calls the controller method as expected - but when in a component, it does not.

Here is my component:

<apex:component >

    <apex:attribute name="rk" description="RK Base Contact Data"  type="Object" required="true"/>

    <div class="unlinkBox">

        <div class="unlinkHeader">

            <div class="unlinkHeaderLeft">Wrong Contact?</div>

            <div class="unlinkHeaderRight"><a href=""  onclick="return hideUnlinkPanel()"><apex:image style="cursor: pointer;" value="{!$Resource.x}" alt="Close Panel" /></a></div>

        </div>

        <div class="unlinkBody">

            <div class="unlinkBodyLeft">

                Click Yes if the Contact displayed is incorrect.<br/><br/>You will be given the opportunity to link to a different Contact.

            </div>

            <div class="unlinkBodyRight">

                <apex:outputpanel id="callMethod">

                    <apex:commandbutton value="Yes, this is the wrong contact" action="{!performUnlinkContact}" rerender="" status="myDisplayStatus" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a onclick="return hideUnlinkPanel()" style="color:blue;cursor:pointer;text-decoration:underline">No</a>

                </apex:outputpanel>

                <apex:actionStatus id="myDisplayStatus"  startText="(performing Contact Unlink...)"  stopText=""/>

            </div>

        </div>

    </div>

</apex:component>

and here is the method in the controller extension:

public PageReference performUnlinkContact() {

     System.debug('==================================!!performUnlink');

    if (this.thisLead.rkContactId__c != 0) {

        this.thisLead.rkContactId__c = 0;

        update this.thisLead;

    }

    return null;

}

I'm sure I must be doing something wrong since I am new to salesforce and still learning, but I am unable to find any related issues when I search on how to resolve this issue. Thanks in advance for the help.

Answer 1

To resolve this issue, you need to add an actionFunction to the base Page, then just call this function in the component via a button's onclick event:

Code in base page:

    <apex:actionFunction name="doUnlink" action="{!performUnlinkContact}" rerender="refresh" status="myStatus"/>

Code to call function in the component:

    <input type="button" value="Yes, this is the wrong contact" onclick="doUnlink();" />

This method seems to work well so far.

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