I'm converting from RichFaces to PrimeFaces 11.0 and replacing a custom component based on the old rich:suggestionBox with p:autoComplete. This works perfectly in most code where the value refers to a POJO property. However I'm finding difficulty getting p:autoComplete to set the value of a reference from an ArrayList of POJOs.

class OrderItem {
...
    public List<Contact> getContacts() {
        return contacts;
    }
...
}

On a view, we want to be able to allow autoCompletes on multiple contacts per orderItem. The orderItem.contacts list is prepopulated with null placeholders by the time this is rendered:

<ui:repeat id="assignabilityContacts" value="#{orderItem.contacts}" var="_contact" varStatus="idx">
...
    <p:autoComplete value="#{orderItem.contacts[idx.index]}"
        id="existingContact"
        binding="#{contactGroupManager.contactAutoComplete}"
        converter="#{baseEntityConverter}"
        completeMethod="#{contactGroupManager.autocomplete}"
        forceSelection="true"
        var="row" itemValue="#{row}" itemLabel="#{row.toString()}"
        minQueryLength="2"
        maxResults="10"
        >
        <f:attribute name="orderItem" value="#{orderItem}" />
   </p:autoComplete>

The signature of the complete method is...

public List<Contact> autocomplete(Object suggest) {
}

And the converter follows Bauke Scholtz pattern for entities: Implement converters for entities with Java Generics

As defined above, the value of orderItem.contacts[idx.index] is being set to a string, corresponding to the toString() of the selected pojo. The converter is never called.

If I change the value to a property of class Contact on another backing bean, the converter is called and the property is set to the selected Contact entity. This is the correct behavior.

    value="#{contactSelector.selectedContact}"

Is it possible that autoConverter is not picking up the entity class from the List, and are there any suggested workarounds for this?