Book Image

Seam 2.x Web Development

Book Image

Seam 2.x Web Development

Overview of this book

The Seam framework from JBoss allows developers to use JSF, Facelets, EJB, and JPA to write conversational web applications. But you will first have to learn how these standard technologies are integrated using Seam and how they can be built upon using additional Seam components. If you need to build a Java web application fast, but don't have time to learn all these complex features, then this book is for you. The book provides a practical approach to developing Seam applications highlighting good development practices. It provides a complete walk through to develop Web applications using Seam, Facelets, and RichFaces and explains how to deploy them to the JBoss Application Server. You can start using key aspects of the Seam framework immediately because this book builds on them chapter by chapter, finally ending with details of enterprise functionality such as PDF report generation and event frameworks. First, the book introduces you to the fundamentals of Seam applications, describing topics such as Injection, Outjection and Bijection. You will understand the Facelets framework, AJAX, database persistence, and advanced Seam concepts through the many examples in the book. The book takes a practical approach throughout to describing the technologies and tools involved. You will add functionality to Seam applications after you learn how to use the Seam Generator RAD tools and how to customize and fully test application functionality. Hints and tips are provided along the way of how to use Seam and the JBoss Application Server.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Seam 2.x Web Development
Credits
About the author
About the reviewers
Preface

What are conversations?


In the previous section, we talked about different scopes for Seam components and highlighted the conversation scope that can be applied to components. To get a good understanding of this, we really need to understand what a conversation is.

Simply put, a conversation in Seam is a flow of one or more pages in which the components involved maintain their state. This is analogous to a conversation that you may have with another person. During the conversation, you remember what you are talking about. The conversation has a defined start point and a defined end point, and if you desire, you can carry on conversations with two or more parties at the same time.

Seam supports two types of conversations: background or temporary conversations and long-running conversations. Within Seam, a background conversation is always present across JSF requests and redirects, which allows conversational state to be stored by JSF across the different phases of the JSF lifecycle. One of...