dynamic panelMenu in richfaces - dynamic

Question

I am trying to create a panelMenu dynamically using a list of items I have already.
But it doesn't seem to work as I get nothing as result.
So here is my code:
<rich:panelMenu id="filterListFuncPost" style="width:180px"
itemMode="ajax" groupMode="ajax"
groupExpandedLeftIcon="triangleUp"
groupCollapsedLeftIcon="triangleDown"
topGroupExpandedRightIcon="chevronUp"
topGroupCollapsedRightIcon="chevronDown" itemLeftIcon="disc">
<rich:panelMenuGroup label="Functional Positions">
<c:forEach xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core" var="item"
items="#{reportsBacking.selectedFunctPosIndex}">
<rich:panelMenuItem label="#{item}" />
</c:forEach>
</rich:panelMenuGroup>
</rich:panelMenu>

Answer 1

For whom it might help, I found a way to make it work which is to use a rich:list instead of c:forEach and it works fine.

Answer 2

UPDATE: Does work for RichFaces panelMenu, but only if you use the right iterator. I returned to this problem with fresh eyes and found a fairly obvious solution, but it doesn't appear to be out there on the internets yet so here it is:
xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core"
xmlns:rich="http://richfaces.org/rich"
<rich:panelMenu id="menuRoot">
<rich:panelMenuGroup id="lev1menu">
<c:forEach var="fancyGroup" items="#{myBean.myFancyGroupEntity}">
<rich:panelMenuGroup label="#{fancyGroup.name}" id="lev2menu_#{fancyGroup.id}">
<c:forEach var="fancyItem" items="#{fancyGroup.items}">
<rich:panelMenuItem label="#{fancyItem.name}" action="#{myBean.viewItem}">
<a4j:actionParam name="itemId" value="#{fancyItem.id}"/>
</rich:panelMenuItem>
</c:forEach>
</rich:panelMenuGroup>
</c:forEach>
</rich:panelMenuGroup>
</rich:panelMenu>
Why does it work? Beacuse the JSTL core components are parsed and processed before the JSF components (or something like that) and so the c:forEach renders out all the RichFaces (or other JSF) child components prior to JSF being parsed and processed. Hence the panelMenu has children of correct type by the time it gets parsed.
OLD: Won't work with RichFaces panelMenu (org.richfaces.component.UIPanelMenu) component.
I tried a similar approach using database items to dynamically generate a hierarchy of menus but when it attempts to parse it on the server side RichFaces tries to cast any children to be either panelMenuGroup or panelMenuItem and fell over with a ClassCastException trying to cast from com.sun.facelets.component.UIRepeat, which would be the same for your JSTL forEach iteration component (which is an instance of org.apache.taglibs.standard.tag.rt.core.ForEachTag on the server, I think).