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

AJAX and the Seam Framework


The Seam Framework provides built-in support for AJAX via its direct integration with libraries such as RichFaces and AJAX4JSF. Discussing the AJAX support of RichFaces and AJAX4JSF could fill an entire book, if not two books, so we'll discuss these technologies briefly, towards the end of this chapter, where we'll give an overview of how they can be used in a Seam application.

However, Seam provides a separate technology called Seam Remoting that we'll discuss in detail in this chapter. Seam Remoting allows a method on Seam components to be executed directly from JavaScript code running within a browser, allowing us to easily build AJAX-style applications.

Seam Remoting uses annotations and is conversation-aware, so that we still get all of the benefits of writing conversationally-aware components, except that we can now access them via JavaScript as well as through other view technologies, such as Facelets.

Seam Remoting provides a ready-to-use framework, making...