JSF ui:repeat vs h:dataTable

Question

Before asking this question, I visited many other related ones and tried to gather the maximum of information. But, what I found till now let me understand that there is no real/major difference between ui:repeat and h:dataTable, and that whenever we can use h:dataTable we can also use ui:repeat (sometimes one of them is a little complex than the other, but at the end we got same results).

So, is there any use cases where the only choice is to use h:dataTable? or the opposite (only choice is ui:repeat)?

Answer 1

is there any use cases where the only choice is to use h:dataTable?

• If you want to use an UIData-based component (with all of its special attributes absent in UIRepeat).
• If you want to render a HTML <table> by a JSF component.
• If you want to be able to customize the <table> rendering (like PrimeFaces <p:dataTable> does with sorting, filtering, grouping, folding, lazyloading, etc, etc).
• If you aren't using Facelets as view technology.

or the opposite (only choice is ui:repeat)?

• If you don't want any of above and thus need a pure markup-less iteration component.
• If you want to be able to skip every n items during iteration (using step attribute).