Starting with JSF 2.0, there is no need to create the configuration file, faces-config.xml. Well, this affirmation is partially true, because JSF annotations still don't cover several configurations, such as resource bundles, factories, phase listeners, and so on. Usually, JSF annotations provide sufficient support for our applications; however, as you will see in this chapter, there are still many cases when faces-config.xml is mandatory, or additional configurations must be added in the web.xml file.

Nevertheless, JSF 2.2 provides a programmatic approach that can be used to reproduce faces-config.xml, without writing it in the classical approach. Later in this chapter, you will see how to take advantage of this new feature. For now, you will see a mix of creating and configuring different kinds of JSF artifacts. They will be arbitrarily presented—some of them are well known, from JSF 1.x and 2.0, while others are new...