1. JavaServer Faces: The Fundamentals
Compiled from
Sun TechDays workshops
(JSF Basics, Web-Tier Codecamp:
JavaServer Faces,
Java Studio Creator; IBM RAD)

2. JavaServer Faces (JSF)
is a “server side user interface component framework for Java™ technology-based web applications”
is a specification and reference implementation for a web application development framework
Components
Events
Validators
Back-end-data integration
is designed to be leveraged by tools
NetBeans, RAD (Rational Application Developer), Eclipse, JDeveloper, etc.

3. Why JSF? MVC for web applications Easy to use
Extensible Component and Rendering architecture
Support for client device independence
Standard
Huge vendor and industry support
Built-in UI component model (unlike JSP and Servlet)

4. Why JSF? (cont’d)
Offers finer-grained separation of behavior and presentation than JSP
Component-specific event handling
UI elements as stateful objects on the server
UI-component and Web-tier concepts without limiting you to a particular scripting technology or markup language
Can work with any presentation technology including JSP

5. JSF is a UI Framework for Java Web Applications

6. JSF Architecture

7. Important Basic Capabilities
Extensible UI component model
Flexible rendering model
Events-based interaction model (as opposed to the old “request/response” model)
Validation framework
Basic page navigation support
Internationalization
Accessibility

8. How the JSF Specification Fits In (prior to Facelets)

9. Facelets
Facelets is a powerful but lightweight page declaration language that is used to build JavaServer Faces views using HTML style templates and to build component trees.
Facelets features include the following:
Use of XHTML for creating web pages
Support for Facelets tag libraries in addition to JavaServer Faces and JSTL tag libraries
Support for the Expression Language (EL)
Templating for components and pages

10. Facelets (cont’d)
Advantages of Facelets for large-scale development projects include the following:
Support for code reuse through templating and composite components
Functional extensibility of components and other server-side objects through customization
Faster compilation time
Compile-time EL validation
High-performance rendering
In short, the use of Facelets reduces the time and effort that needs to be spent on development and deployment.
Source: Java EE 6 Tutorial

11. JSF Developer Roles

12. Roles Definition Page Author Component Writer
Creates the user interface of a web application
Familiar with markup language(s) to be used
Assembler of prebuilt components
Component Writer
Creates reusable components, renderers, and libraries
Components – Render-independent properties
Renderers – Render-dependent properties

13. Roles Definition Application Developer
Creates the server-side functionality of a web application not directly related to the user interface
Business logic components implemented in standard J2EE ways (EJBs, JavaBeans, Connectors)
Persistence tier components implemented in standard J2EE ways (EJBs, JDBC, Connectors)
Model data exposed to user interface via JavaBean programming model
Validator, Converter, Event handler

14. Roles Definition Tool Provider JSF Implementor
Creates tools to assist page authors, component writers, and application developers
GUI-oriented page development tools
IDEs to facilitate creation of components
Application generators (from high level description)
Web application frameworks that utilize JSF components for their user interface
JSF Implementor
Provides runtime environment to execute JSF webapps J2EE SDK 1.4

15. Criteria for choosing Struts or JavaServer Faces
JSF
JSP
JSP and Struts
Components
Rich UI-data-bound components with events provided
Custom components
Standard tags (JSTL) that are non-UI and very basic
Custom components through tag libraries
Struts-specific tag library
Only very basic, form-bean-bound components provided
Device independence
Reader kits that provide device independence
None
Error handling and validation
Validation framework
Many predefined validators
Validation framework driven by an XML file (validation.xml)
Scripting
Scripts can be attached to events
All components accessible from scripts
Embedded Java™ in the page
Scripts written in Java Action classes
Form data but not components accessible
Page flow
Simple navigation file (faces-config.xml)
Sophisticated, flexible framework
XML file based
Session and object management
Automatic
Manual