partial page rendering (PPR) with faces-redirect - ajax

Question

I'm using PrimeFaces 3.5 and I faced a problem with partial page rendering. I need to load content from a Facelet file into "dynamic" part of a template.
index.xhtml:
<f:view>
<h:form id="form1">
<p:outputPanel layout="block">
<p:commandButton action="content-2?faces-redirect=false" update="display" />
</p:outputPanel>
<p:outputPanel id="display" layout="block">
content 1
</p:outputPanel>
</h:form>
</f:view>
content-2.xhtml:
<h:body>
content 2 loaded
</h:body>
When I click on the <p:commandButton>, then content-2.xhtml will be opened. However, this refreshes the whole page. The XML response contains like this:
<partial-response><changes><update id="javax.faces.ViewRoot">
When I change the action attribute to a method expression:
<f:view>
<h:form id="form1">
<p:outputPanel layout="block">
<p:commandButton action="#{myBean.increment}" update="display" />
</p:outputPanel>
<p:outputPanel id="display" layout="block">
#{myBean.count}
</p:outputPanel>
</h:form>
</f:view>
Then the display block updates as expected. The XML response contains like this:
<partial-response><changes><update id="form:display">
Why does the action="content-2?faces-redirect=false" way update the entire page?
I also tried to <ui:composition>, but in this case this reloads "static" part of template. I do not want it.

Answer 1

This is fully normal and expected behavior if you navigate to a different view by supplying a non-null outcome in the action attribute. JSF will then overrule the partial render with a render of #all. JSF/Facelets won't somehow automagically retain the common components in the tree as you seemed to expect. If you intend to dynamically change the component tree during a partial page rendering, then you need inside the <p:outputPanel id="display" layout="block"> either a dynamic include something like this (section is just an integer)
<ui:include src="section#{bean.section}.xhtml" />
or multiple conditionally rendered sections
<ui:fragment rendered="#{bean.section == 1}"><ui:include src="section1.xhtml" /></ui:fragment>
<ui:fragment rendered="#{bean.section == 2}"><ui:include src="section2.xhtml" /></ui:fragment>
<ui:fragment rendered="#{bean.section == 3}"><ui:include src="section3.xhtml" /></ui:fragment>
<ui:fragment rendered="#{bean.section == 4}"><ui:include src="section4.xhtml" /></ui:fragment>
Each has its own pros and cons depending on whether the include file contains form/input/command components and/or references view scoped beans. The <ui:include> runs namely during view build time like JSTL. See for more detail also JSTL in JSF2 Facelets... makes sense?
The presence of faces-redirect=false is not significant as it's the default already. If it were true, then a JavaScript window.location would be invoked on the target URL.