Understanding the life cycle of a Faces page
In Chapter 14, Server-Side Coding with Jakarta, we saw the basic life cycle of web apps that employ servlets. Simply put, a submit request is made to a servlet, the servlet receives data from the page in the form of a request object, and you code whatever tasks are necessary, and then a response is returned either from the servlet or as an HTML or JSP page. Faces works differently from this.
There are six parts to the life cycle of a Faces page that begins with a request for a .jsf
page. Here is a diagram that shows the steps in the Faces life cycle:
Figure 15.4 – The Faces life cycle
Let’s review each part: