ADF remove required asterisk - oracle-adf

Question

I have a panelLabelAndMessage containing inputComboboxListOfValues and outputText. The LOV is a mandatory field and hence it has the asterisk beside it. But I have changed simple property to true as I did not want to show label of LOV ans assigned the same label to panelLabelAndMessage. Also changed showrequired property to true for the asterisk. But now the LOV field is also showing asterisk which is undesirable. Any way to remove the star mark but still have the model level validation in place.
I do not want to use required property of LOV.
The code for my label and fields is as below.
<af:panelLabelAndMessage label="#{bindings.Department.label}"
id="plam1"
showRequired="#{bindings.Department.hints.mandatory}">
<af:panelGroupLayout id="pgl1" layout="horizontal">
<af:inputComboboxListOfValues id="DepartmentId"
popupTitle="Search and Select: #{bindings.DepartmentId.hints.label}"
value="#{bindings.DepartmentId.inputValue}"
model="#{bindings.DepartmentId.listOfValuesModel}"
columns="#{bindings.DepartmentId.hints.displayWidth}"
shortDesc="#{bindings.DepartmentId.hints.tooltip}"
required="#{bindings.DepartmentId.hints.mandatory}"
autoSubmit="true"
binding="#{backingBeanScope.BackingBean.departmentLov}"
valueChangeListener="#{backingBeanScope.BackingBean.onSelectDepartment}">
<f:validator binding="#{bindings.DepartmentId.validator}"/>
<af:convertNumber groupingUsed="false"
pattern="#{bindings.DepartmentId.format}"/>
</af:inputComboboxListOfValues>
<af:spacer width="10" height="10" id="s1"/>
<af:outputText value="#{bindings.DepartmentName.inputValue}" id="ot1"
partialTriggers="DepartmentId"
binding="#{backingBeanScope.BackingBean.DepartmentName}"/>
</af:panelGroupLayout>
</af:panelLabelAndMessage>

Answer 1

To answer to core question (can you remove the asterisk ): Yes, by using ADF Skinning.
Some examples:
.hideRequired af|selectOneChoice::label af|panelFormLayout::label-cell .AFRequiredIconStyle,
.hideRequired af|panelFormLayout::label-cell .AFRequiredIconStyle,
.hideRequired af|selectOneChoice::label .AFRequiredIconStyle
{
display:none ;
}
Note that we add hideRequired as a styleClass to the component (you can give it an other name).
The one you will probably need to use is:
.hideRequired af|inputComboboxListOfValues::label .AFRequiredIconStyle
{
display:none;
}

Answer 2

Remove required property, the validation will still fire for LOV.
But since you have skipValidtion set to true therefore the model level validation will also not fire.
Here is how you implement required field validation without using required="true" or model level validation in Jdeveloper 11.1.2.* or higher, as this solution does not works for versions older than JSF2.0
Create a validator method in your managed bean, or if you want to reuse the validator then create a custom validator for your application.
public void requiredFieldValidator(FacesContext facesContext, UIComponent uIComponent, Object object) {
if (null == object) {
throw new ValidatorException(new FacesMessage(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_ERROR, "This field can not be empty",
null));
}
else{
if(object.toString().trim().equals("")){
throw new ValidatorException(new FacesMessage(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_ERROR, "This field can not be empty",
null));
}
}
}
Use this method as your lov validator
<af:inputListOfValues label="Lov1" popupTitle="Search and Result Dialog" id="ilov1"
validator="#{pageFlowScope.mBean.emailValidator}"/>
More importantly, to make validator works on empty fields, set javax.faces.VALIDATE_EMPTY_FIELDS to true in your web.xml
<context-param>
<param-name>javax.faces.VALIDATE_EMPTY_FIELDS</param-name>
<param-value>true</param-value>
</context-param>