Java developers and Web designers today need more powerful tools to deliver the richer, faster, and smoother web experience that users now demand. JavaServer Faces is an advanced web application framework that includes hundreds of powerful, feature-rich, Ajax-enabled UI components that provide all of the functionality needed to build web applications in a Web 2.0 world.
There has never been a better time to learn JSF. The JSF ecosystem is growing fast and the abundance of JSF components, development tools, industry conferences, and job opportunities is impressive. Learning JSF can be a challenge, but this book makes it easy by showing you the most important JSF technologies and concepts that you need to know to become a JSF professional.
Chapter 1:Standard JSF Components introduces you to the JavaServer Faces framework and the key concepts that you need to understand to build simple JSF applications. You will learn about Model-View-Controller, managed beans, the JSF expression language, converters, and validators. You will also discover how to use the standard JSF user interface components (such as text fields, radio buttons, selection lists, and checkboxes) to receive text, date/time, numeric, and other types of input from users as well as handle form submission, render messages, lay out components in a grid, and display a data table.
Chapter 2:Facelets Components introduces the Facelets view definition framework and compares it to JSP as the view technology for JSF. You will learn about working with valid XHTML documents and will see examples of how to use the Facelets framework to create simple and complex composite user interfaces based on Facelets templates. You will also learn how to use the Facelets component library to display debugging information, iterate data, include and remove UI components and markup, pass parameters between Facelets pages, create reusable view elements, and apply advanced Facelets templating concepts.
Chapter 3:Apache MyFaces Tomahawk Components covers the Apache MyFaces Tomahawk component library and looks at how to use Tomahawk components such as calendars, trees, a file upload component, and navigation menus to solve common web development tasks. You will learn how to use Tomahawk components to validate user input, accept date/time input, upload files, render tree components, create navigation menus, implement user interface security, display sortable data tables, and use newspaper layouts.
Chapter 4:Apache MyFaces Trinidad Components discusses the Apache MyFaces Trinidad framework and Ajax technology and will introduce you to many of the 100 plus rich user interface controls in this powerful component library. You will learn how to use color choosers, pop-up calendars, dynamic trees, data tables, a number spinbox, shuttle components, navigation menus, layout panels, and more, to implement typical web development use cases. You will also learn how to use the Apache MyFaces Trinidad dialog framework to add dialog windows to your application, how to enable Trinidad's client-side JavaScript validation, how to create dynamic navigation menus, how to design custom skins and icons for Trinidad's skinning framework, and how to use Trinidad's partial page rendering (PPR) Ajax feature to enhance your JSF pages.
Chapter 5:ICEfaces Components introduces the ICEfaces Ajax component library, and explains many of the important concepts that you need to know in order to develop JSF applications based on ICEfaces. You will learn how to use many of the more than 50 Ajax-enabled user interface components in the ICEfaces component library, such as how to add dynamic effects to your pages to enhance input validation, how to use navigation and context menus, how to work with tree components, how to render dynamic data tables that support sorting and paging, how to render pie charts and bar graphs, how to create a tabbed user interface, how to arrange elements using drag-and-drop, how to lay out components in a grid, and how to work with modal dialogs.
Chapter 6:JBoss Seam Components covers the JBoss Seam framework and introduces you to the fundamentals of building JSF applications that use the full Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) technology stack. You will learn how to configure Seam, how to apply Seam annotations to Java classes, and how to use Seam JSF controls to bridge the gap between Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB3) components, the Java Persistence API (JPA), and the JSF framework. This chapter will show you how to validate user input efficiently using Seam, JPA, and the Hibernate Validator framework. You will also discover how to use the Seam tag library and Java API to display validation and success messages, render required field decorations, display debugging information, use Seam's conversation management feature to implement robust JSF workflows, and how to combine Seam with JBoss RichFaces and Ajax4jsf to build next generation JSF applications.
Chapter 7:JBoss RichFaces and Ajax4jsf Components covers the JBoss RichFaces and Ajax4jsf component libraries. You will learn how to use many advanced RichFaces components such as in-place editable text, a calendar, an Ajax-based auto-complete suggestion box, rich panel and menu components, a Google map component, a Microsoft Virtual Earth component, dynamic data tables with sorting and paging, data grids, a color picker, a slider component, a number spinner, a picklist control, a rich text editor, and more. You will also learn how to add Ajax support to non-Ajax JSF components with Ajax4jsf, and how to perform advanced Ajax tasks such as submitting forms asynchronously, submitting one component at a time, polling the server, and re-rendering parts of the page after an Ajax request.
Appendix:Learning JSF: Next Steps introduces JavaServer Faces 2.0 and provides a summary of the key features in the next generation of the JSF framework. You will discover how JSF 2.0 emphasizes convention over configuration by learning about the new JSF annotations to simplify managed bean configuration and reduce XML, the new JSF resource loading mechanism, the simplified navigation mapping convention, the integration of Facelets into the core JSF framework, the new "composite" JSF tag library for defining composite components, and the significantly improved support for Ajax that is now built-in to the framework. You will also learn about PrimeFaces, a promising new JSF component library.
To run the example applications included with this book, you will need a Java Servlet/JSP container that supports JSF 1.2 such as Apache Tomcat 6.0 (http://tomcat.apache.org) and a Java EE container such as JBoss Application Server 4.2 (http://www.jboss.org).
The example applications were developed using Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers (Galileo Release) (http://www.eclipse.org), Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 (http://www.adobe.com), and JSFToolbox for Dreamweaver 3.5 (http://www.jsftoolbox.com). You will also need the MySQL 5.1 database (http://www.mysql.org). The example applications can be downloaded from the publisher's website (http://www.packtpub.com).
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "The following example demonstrates some of the context parameters that we set in web.xml to enable the Facelets ViewHandler."
A block of code will be set as follows:
<application> <message-bundle>messages</message-bundle> <locale-config> <default-locale>en</default-locale> <supported-locale>fr</supported-locale> <supported-locale>es</supported-locale> </locale-config> </application>
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items will be shown in bold:
<h:inputText id="emailAddress" value="#{customerBean.customer.emailAddress}" required="#{true}">
<t:validateEmail message="The email address you have entered is not valid." />
</h:inputText>
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in our text like this: "First let's examine the code for the Cancel button."
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Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Visithttp://www.packtpub.com/files/code/7627_Code.zip to directly download the example code.
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