What's New and Cool with JSF 2?

David Geary

JSF 2.0 Expert Group member, author of many books (including Core JavaServer Faces)

Cay Horstmann

Author of even more books (including Core JavaServer Faces)

JSF 1.x

• Part of Java EE Standard (JSR 127, 252)
• Component oriented web framework
• Two implementations: Sun, Apache
• Veeeery extensible
• Tool support
• Third party component libraries

JSF 2.0

• Part of Java EE 6 (JSR 314)
• Reduced XML configuration
• Better error handling
• Ajax
• Support for GET requests
• Easier component authoring
• Resource handling
• Lots of plumbing for tool builders

Easy Navigation

• Before:

  <h:commandButton value="Press me!" action="next"/>
  
  <navigation-rule>
    <navigation-case>
      <from-outcome>next</from-outcome>
      <to-view-id>/next.jsp</to-view-id>
    </navigation-case>
  </navigation-rule>

• Now:

  <h:commandButton value="Press me!" action="next"/>

Managed Bean Annotations

<h:inputText value="#{login.name}"/>

• Before:

  <managed-bean>
    <managed-bean-name>login</managed-bean>
    <managed-bean-class>com.corejsf.Login</managed-bean>
    <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>
  </managed-bean>

• Now:

  @ManagedBean @SessionScoped
  public class Login { ... }

Facelets

• Was third party extension (Jacob Hookom)
• Now part of the standard
• The preferred view handler in JSF
• No more JSP mess
• MUCH better error messages
• Page composition

Bookmarkable URLs

• In JSF 1.x, everything is a POST
• Browser bar URL one step behind
• Can't be bookmarked
• JSF 2.x supports GET requests
• New tags h:button, h:link
• View Parameters
  • Bound to beans when request comes in
  • Can be attached to next request

  <f:metadata>
    <f:viewParam name="q" value="#{quizBean.currentProblem}" />
    <f:viewParam name="score" value="#{quizBean.score}" />
  </f:metadata>
   ...
  <h:link outcome="#{quizBean.skipOutcome}" value="Skip" includeViewParams="true">
    <f:param name="q" value="#{quizBean.currentProblem + 1}" />
  </h:link>

Composite Components

• Made up of simpler components
• Example: Login component with username/password fields
• True JSF components
• Can attach validators, listeners
• Specified with XHTML+composite tags

  <composite:interface>
    <composite:actionSource name="form:loginAction"/>
    ...
  </composite:interface>
  <composite:implementation>
    <h:form...>
      ...
      <h:commandButton id="loginAction"
           value="Login" action="welcome"/>
    </h:form>
  </composite:implementation>

Ajax

• Very easy to use Ajax with components

  <h:commandButton value="Update">
    <f:ajax execute="input1 input2" render="output1"/>
  </h:commandButton>

• Partial lifecycle executed for named components

  

Minor Features

• Resource loading
  • Standard resources directory
  • h:graphicImage, h:outputStylesheet, h:outputScript have library, name attributes

    <h:outputStylesheet library="css" name="styles.css" />

  • Dynamic versioning
  • Botched attempt at i18n
• New scopes
  • View scope
  • Flash
• 14 new events
  • Most useful for app developers: preRenderView, postValidate

    <f:event type="postValidate" listener="#{user.validate}"/>

How to Play

• RI is feature-complete but not bug-free
• Download JSF 2.0 RI from http://javaserverfaces.dev.java.net/
• Works with Tomcat
• Or download Glassfish v3 Prelude
• Or Netbeans 6.7 RC
• Caveat: These may not have the latest JSF 2.0 implementations today

Looking Forward

• Component libraries for 2.0
  • IceFaces
  • RichFaces
  • Trinidad
• Cruft removal
• Integration with Web Beans (JSR 299)