"The request-response lifecycle handles two kinds of requests: initial requests and postbacks. An initial request occurs when a user makes a request for a page for the first time. A postback request occurs when a user submits the form contained on a page that was previously loaded into the browser as a result of executing an initial request."
Reference: Oracle Java EE 6 Tutorial The Lifecycle of a JavaServer Faces Application
JSF 2.0 is the standard Web Framework that ships with Java EE 6. Here I will build a simple JSF web app to get you started with the build stones.
With starting with Java EE 6, there is a ONE dependency for all Java EE, namely javax:javaee-api:[6.0|7.0]. A basic pom.xml file for Java EE 6 is.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>se.magnuskkarlsson.examples</groupId>
<artifactId>example-jsf20</artifactId>
<version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>war</packaging>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<project.build.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.outputEncoding>
<maven.compiler.source>1.8</maven.compiler.source>
<maven.compiler.target>1.8</maven.compiler.target>
<failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>javax</groupId>
<artifactId>javaee-api</artifactId>
<version>6.0</version>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<finalName>${project.artifactId}</finalName>
</build>
</project>
Starting with EE 6 the web.xml is no longer compulsory, so here we will skip it.
A new feature in JSF 2.0, is that you do not need to declare navigation in the faces-config.xml, but you need to declare. That is the same thing with CDI. To enable CDI you need to have beans.xml. So we have to deployment descriptors.
Another feature in JSF 2.0, is that you can use ordinary CDI annotation instead of JSF specific. This makes one thing less to remember.
So instead of @javax.faces.bean.ManagedBean we can use @javax.inject.Named.
And instead of @javax.faces.bean.RequestScoped we can use @javax.enterprise.context.RequestScoped.
So a simple request scope baking bean for JSF is.
package se.magnuskkarlsson.example.jsf;
import javax.enterprise.context.RequestScoped;
import javax.inject.Named;
@Named
@RequestScoped
// Shorthand for @Named and @RequestScoped is @javax.enterprise.inject.Model
public class UserBean {
private String name;
public String getMessage() {
return (name != null) ? "Hello " + name : null;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
}
And finally our simple hello JSF page. Notice the commandButton and action, it points to JSF page hello, i.e. to the page itself.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html">
<h:head>
<title>Example JSF 2.0 Hello</title>
</h:head>
<h:body>
<h:form>
<h:outputLabel value="What is your name?" for="name" />
<h:inputText id="name" value="${userBean.name}" />
<h:commandButton value="Submit" action="hello" />
</h:form>
<p>
<h:outputText value="${userBean.message}"
rendered="${not empty userBean.message}" />
</p>
</h:body>
</html>
Now build and deploy it to e.g. JBoss EAP 6, the app is accessible from either
http://localhost:8080/example-jsf20-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT/hello.jsf
http://localhost:8080/example-jsf20-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT/faces/hello.xhtml
"JSP technology is considered to be a deprecated presentation technology for JavaServer Faces. Facelets is a part of the JavaServer Faces specification and also the preferred presentation technology for building JavaServer Faces technology-based applications."
| Tag Library | URI | Prefix | Example | Contents |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JavaServer Faces HTML Tag Library | http://java.sun.com/jsf/html | h: |
h:head h:body h:outputText h:inputText |
JavaServer Faces component tags for all UIComponent objects |
| JavaServer Faces Core Tag Library | http://java.sun.com/jsf/core | f: |
f:actionListener f:attribute |
Tags for JavaServer Faces custom actions that are independent of any particular render kit |
| JavaServer Faces Facelets Tag Library | http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets | ui: |
ui:component ui:insert |
Tags for templating |
| JSTL Core Tag Library | http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core | c: |
c:forEach c:catch |
JSTL 1.2 Core Tags |
| JSTL Functions Tag Library | http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/functions | fn: |
fn:toUpperCase fn:toLowerCase |
JSTL 1.2 Functions Tags |
Reference: Oracle Java EE 6 Tutorial: What Is Facelets?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core"
xmlns:fn="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/functions">
<h:head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<h:outputStylesheet library="css" name="default.css" />
<title>Facelets Template</title>
</h:head>
<h:body>
<h1>Hello</h1>
</h:body>
</html>