This book will cover all the important aspects involved in developing JSF applications. It provides clear instructions for getting the most out of JSF and offers many exercises to build impressive desktop-style interfaces for your web applications. You will learn to develop JSF applications starting with simple recipes and gradually moving on to complex recipes.
We start off with the simple concepts of converters, validators, and file management. We then work our way through various resources such as CSS, JavaScript, and images to improve your web applications. You will learn to build simple and complex custom components to suit your needs. Next, you get to exploit AJAX as well as implement internationalization and localization for your JSF applications. We then look into ensuring security for your applications and performing testing of your applications. You also get to learn all about Facelets and explore the newest JSF 2.0 features. Finally, you get to learn a few integrations such as JSTL with JSF, Spring with JSF, and Hibernate with JSF. All these concepts are presented in the form of easy-to-follow recipes.
Each chapter discusses separate types of recipes and they are presented with an increasing level of complexity from simple to advanced. All of these recipes can be used with JSF 1.2 as well as JSF 2.0.
Chapter 1, Using Standard and Custom Converters in JSF covers the standard and custom converters in JSF. We start with implicit and explicit conversion examples, then move on to creating and using custom converters, and we end up with client-side converters using MyFaces Trinidad.
Chapter 2, Using Standard and Custom Validators in JSF continues with standard and custom validators. We see how to use a standard validator, how to create and use custom validators, and how to use RichFaces and Apache MyFaces validators. We also present the new JSF 2.0 validators, such as f:validateRegex and f:validateRequired.
Chapter 3, File Management discusses file management issues. You will see different methods for downloading and uploading files, learn how to use JSF Core, RichFaces, PrimeFaces, and Apache Tomahawk. In addition, you will see how to export data to PDF and Excel, and how to extract data from an uploaded CSV file.
Chapter 4, Security covers some security issues. You will see how to use the JSF Security project without JAAS Roles, use secured managed beans with JSF Security, and use Acegi/Spring security in JSF applications.
Chapter 5, Custom Components discusses custom components in JSF. You will see how to build different kinds of custom components in JSF 2.0, Archetypes for Maven, JSF and Dojo and more.
Chapter 6, AJAX in JSF starts with the f:ajax tag, continues with Dynamic Faces, RichFaces, ajax4jsf, and ends up with PrimeFaces and learning to write reusable AJAX components.
Chapter 7, Internationalization and Localization covers internationalization and localization. We will see how to load message resource bundles on JSF pages and how to use locales and message resource bundles. We then move on to parameterized messages, learning how to display Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and so on and how to select time zones in JSF 2.0.
Chapter 8, JSF, Images, CSS, and JS discusses JSF with images, CSS, JS, and RSS. We will integrate JS with JSF, pass values between JS and JSF, crop images, work with dynamic images, work with pop-up windows, RSS support, and so on.
Chapter 9, JSF—Managing and Testing starts with Faces Console, and moves on to JSFUnit and JMeter.
Chapter 10, Facelets covers Facelets recipes. You will see how to work with aliasing components, templates, composition components, passing actions, and sub-elements to composition components.
Chapter 11, JSF 2.0 Features presents some of the most relevant JSF 2.0 features, such as annotations, exception handling mechanism, declarative event handling, URLs based on specified navigation outcome, JSF view parameters, JSF 2.0, and navigation cases.
Chapter 12, Mixing JSF with Other Technologies discusses mixing JSF with other important technologies, such as Spring, Seam, JSTL, Hibernate, and EJB (JPA).
Appendix, Configuring JSF-related Technologies talks about the issues when a JSF-related technology gets into the equation. You need to add some specific configuration, you have to create a "bridge" between JSF and the technology used. This appendix contains the configurations for a few technologies.