I have found two different methods for expanding nodes in Rich tree  from code, they both take  advantage of component binding and component state.

Tree Setup

Only thing to note here is the binding attribute that we setup in our backing bean.

	protected org.richfaces.component.UITree sampleTreeBinding; 

for both solutions after we changed the sampleTree we need to update the binding with new value whitch is
value="#{ourbean.sampleTree}"

// Make sure that we set the new TreeModel on current binding
sampleTreeBinding.setValue(sampleTree);

Solution 1 : Expanding all nodes

TreeState componentState = (TreeState) sampleTreeBinding.getComponentState();
try {
	componentState.expandAll(sampleTreeBinding);
} catch (IOException e) {
	e.printStackTrace();
}

This will expand all levels of the nodes.

Solution 2 : Expanding only nodes that meet our criteria

try {
	final TreeState state = (TreeState) sampleTreeBinding.getComponentState();
	sampleTreeBinding.walk(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(), new DataVisitor(){
		@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
		public void process(FacesContext context, Object rowKey, Object argument)
		throws IOException {
			TreeRowKey