title: JSF2 and GAE: Passing parameter with Method Expression
body: <p>I followed the tutorial by <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/wildstartech.com/adventures-in-java/Java-Platform-Enterprise-Edition/JavaServer-Faces/sun-javaserver-faces-reference-implementation/configuring-jsf-20-to-run-on-the-google-appengine" rel="nofollow">Google</a> and included <code>el-api-2.2.jar</code> and <code>el-impl-2.2.jar</code> to <code>WEB-INF/lib</code>. My test case is simple:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;f:view contentType="text/html"&gt;
    &lt;h:form id="f1"&gt;
      &lt;p:commandLink action="#{parameterBean.test(myString)}"&gt;
        &lt;h:outputText value="test"/&gt;
      &lt;/p:commandLink&gt;
    &lt;/h:form&gt;
  &lt;/f:view&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The action method is just a <code>public void test(String s) {log.log(Level.INFO, "T: "+s);}</code>. I The log shows (during initial rendering of the page):</p>
  
  <pre><code>javax.faces.view.facelets.TagAttributeException: /jsf/admin/test/parameter.xhtml
  @15,62 action="#{parameterBean.test('myString')}" Error Parsing:
  #{parameterBean.test('myString')}
  ...
  Caused by: javax.el.ELException: Error Parsing: #{parameterBean.test('myString')}
  ...
  Caused by: org.apache.el.parser.ParseException: Encountered " "(" "( ""
  at line 1, column 21.
    Was expecting one of: "}" "." "[" "&gt;" ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I think this error is GAE specific and I'm wondering where <code>org.apache.el.parser</code> comes into the game, since the el-libs provide the following packages:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><code>el-api-2.2.jar</code>: <code>javax.el.*</code></li>
  <li><code>el-impl-2.2.jar</code>: <code>com.sun.el.*</code></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>Note</strong> During investigation of this problem I checked the <a href="https://uel.dev.java.net/" rel="nofollow">Unified Expression Language web site</a> (given in the tutorial) again and only found <code>el-api-1.1.jar</code> and <code>el-impl-1.1.jar</code> as the latest versions. The error stays the same.</p>