How to set a value at runtime in a visual component on a component controller?

Question

I have an interesting problem. I have a visual force component where i am looping through a list of data objects say MenuItem data object for now. Now i populate this list on a property in the visual force component controller. Now on the visual force component, as i loop through the collection, i need to render an output text or menu item of a particular style class based on the menuitem data objects status class variable. I am creating an if statement on the render and the code is not recognizing it. The code is below and it is not compiling on the menuData.menuItemState property. This is a custom object class variable and is not defined as a property on the component controller?

<apex:outputPanel layout="block">
<apex:dataList value="{!lstMenuItemData}}" var="menuData">  
    <div id="subNavContainer">
        <apex:outputText styleClass = "subNavSection selected" 
            value="{!menuData.menuItemDisplayText}" 
            rendered="{!IF(menuData.menuItemState=='S',true,false)}"/>
    </div>
</apex:dataList>
</apex:outputPanel>

Answer 1

You should post your class to get a solid response, but make sure the class member is itself an accessible property:

public with sharing SomeController
{
  public MyClass
  {
    public String menuItemState {get; set;}
    // etc.

Also you can simplify your render conditional:

rendered="{!menuData.menuItemState == 'S'}"