Mastering JavaServer Faces 2.2

Table of Contents

Mastering JavaServer Faces 2.2

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

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Free access for Packt account holders

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Dynamic Access to JSF Application Data through Expression Language (EL 3.0)

EL syntax

EL operators

EL precedence of operators

EL reserved words

EL immediate and deferred evaluation

EL value expressions

Referencing a managed bean

Referencing a managed bean's properties

Referencing a managed bean's nested properties

Referencing Java SE enumerated types

Referencing collections

EL implicit objects

EL method expressions

The conditional text in JSF

Writing a custom EL resolver

EL 3.0 overview

Working with the assignment operator

Working with the string concatenation operator

Working with the semicolon operator

Exploring lambda expressions

Working with collection objects

Summary

2. Communication in JSF

Passing and getting parameters

Using context parameters

Passing request parameters with the tag

Working with view parameters

Calling actions on GET requests

Passing attributes with the tag

Setting property values via action listeners

Passing parameters using the Flash scope

Replacing the tag with the JSTL tag

Sending data through cookies

Working with hidden fields

Sending passwords

Accessing UI component attributes programmatically

Passing parameters via method expressions

Communicating via the binding attribute

Managed bean communication

Injecting a managed bean into another bean

Communication between managed beans using the application/session map

Accessing other managed beans programmatically

Summary

3. JSF Scopes – Lifespan and Use in Managed Beans Communication

JSF scopes versus CDI scopes

The request scope

The session scope

The view scope

The application scope

The conversation scope

The flow scope

The simple flow

Flows with beans

Nested flows

Configuring flows programmatically

Flows and navigation cases

Inspecting flow navigation cases

Using the initializer and finalizer

Using the flow switch

Packaging flows

Programmatic flow scope

Dependent pseudo-scope

The none scope

The custom scope

Writing the custom scope class

Resolving a custom scope EL expression

Controlling the custom scope lifespan with action listeners

Controlling the custom scope lifespan with the navigation handler

Managed bean instantiation

Beans injection

Summary

4. JSF Configurations Using XML Files and Annotations – Part 1

JSF 2.2 new namespaces

JSF 2.2 programmatic configuration

Configuring managed beans in XML

Working with multiple configuration files

Configuring locales and resource bundles

Configuring validators and converters

Configuring navigation

Implicit navigation

Conditional navigation

Preemptive navigation

Programmatic Navigation

Configuring action listeners

Application action listeners

Configuring system event listeners

Using

Implementing SystemEventListener

Configuring phase listeners

Working with @ListenerFor and @ListenersFor

Summary

5. JSF Configurations Using XML Files and Annotations – Part 2

Configuring resource handlers

Adding CSS and JS resources programmatically

Configuring the view handler

Overriding JSF renders

Working with client behavior functionality

JSF factories

Configuring the global exception handler

Configuring RenderKit factory

Configuring PartialViewContext

Configuring visitContext

Configuring ExternalContext

Configuring Flash

JSF 2.2 Window ID API

Configuring lifecycle

Configuring the application

Configuring VDL

Combined power of multiple factories

Summary

6. Working with Tabular Data

Creating a simple JSF table

The CollectionDataModel class of JSF 2.2

Sorting tables

Sorting and DataModel – CollectionDataModel

Deleting a table row

Editing/updating a table row

Adding a new row

Displaying row numbers

Selecting a single row

Selecting multiple rows

Nesting tables

Paginating tables

Generating tables with the JSF API

Filtering tables

Styling tables

Alternate row colors with the rowclasses attribute

Highlighting rows on mouse hover

Highlighting rows on mouse click

Summary

7. JSF and AJAX

A brief overview of the JSF-AJAX lifecycle

A simple JSF-AJAX example to get started

The JSF-AJAX attributes

The execute and render attributes

The listener attribute

The event attribute

The onevent attribute – monitoring AJAX state on client

The onerror attribute – monitoring AJAX errors on client

Grouping components under tag

Updating input fields with AJAX after validation error

The Cancel and Clear buttons

Value submitted to a view scoped managed bean

Value submitted to a request scoped managed bean

Mixing AJAX and flow scope

Postback and AJAX

Postback request's conditional rendering/executing

Is it a non-AJAX request?

AJAX and

Queue control for AJAX requests

Explicit loading of jsf.js

Depicting the params value

Non-UICommand components and jsf.ajax.request

Customizing jsf.js

AJAX and the progress bar/indicator

Summary

8. JSF 2.2 – HTML5 and Upload

Working with HTML5 and JSF 2.2

Pass-through attributes

Pass-through elements

JSF 2.2 – HTML5 and Bean Validation 1.1 (Java EE 7)

JSF 2.2 upload feature

A simple JSF 2.2 upload example

Using multiple elements

Extracting info about a file to be uploaded

Writing uploaded data to a disk

Upload validator

Ajaxify the upload

Uploading images with preview

Uploading multiple files

Upload and the indeterminate progress bar

Upload and the determinate progress bar

Summary

9. JSF State Management

JSF saving the view state

JSF partial saving view state

Partial state saving and tree visiting

JSF saving view state on the server or client

JSF logical and physical views

Saving the state in a database – an experimental application

Writing the custom ResponseStateManager class

Adding MongoDB in equation

Handling ViewExpiredException

Server-state serialization in a session

JSF 2.2 is stateless

The view scoped beans and the stateless feature

Detecting stateless views programmatically

JSF security notes

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF)

Cross-site scripting (XSS)

SQL injection

Summary

10. JSF Custom Components

Building noncomposite custom components

Writing a custom tag handler

Dissecting a custom component

Custom component implementation

Building composite components

Developing the Temperature composite component

Transforming a jQuery component into composite component

Writing the HTML5 date picker as a composite component

Decorating an image with actions

Working with composite facets

Validating/converting inputs inside composite components

Checking the presence of an attribute

Composite components' pitfalls

Null values within a composite component's attributes

Hiding pass-through attributes in composite components

Counting the children of a composite component

Top-level component's pitfall

Distributing composite components as JARs in JSF 2.2

Adding composite components programmatically

Summary

11. JSF 2.2 Resource Library Contracts – Themes

Working with contracts

Styling tables with contracts

Styling UI components with contracts

Styling contracts across different devices

Writing contracts for composite components

Writing a theme switcher

Configuring contracts in XML

Packaging contracts in JARs

Summary

12. Facelets Templating

A brief overview of the Facelets tags

Creating a simple template – PageLayout

Passing parameters via

Passing bean properties and action methods via

Exploiting the and tags

Iterating with

Working with and

Working with and

Debugging with

Removing the content with

Using the jsfc attribute

Extending the PageLayout template

Facelets' programmatic aspects

FaceletFactory considerations

Working with FaceletCache

ResourceResolver swallowed by ResourceHandler

Include Facelets programmatically

Creating a TagHandler class

Writing custom Facelets taglib functions

Facelets pitfalls

AJAX and

Exemplifying versus

Exemplifying versus

Summary

A. The JSF Life Cycle

Index

Mastering JavaServer Faces 2.2

Mastering JavaServer Faces 2.2

Copyright © 2014 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either expressed or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

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First published: June 2014

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Credits

Author

Anghel Leonard

Reviewers

Mert Çalışkan

Michael Kurz

Thierry Leriche-Dessirier

Michael Müller

Luca Preziati

Commissioning Editor

Owen Roberts

Acquisition Editor

Owen Roberts

Content Development Editor

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Technical Editors

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Production Coordinator

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Cover Work

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About the Author

Anghel Leonard is a senior Java developer with more than 13 years of experience in Java SE, Java EE, and related frameworks. He has written and published more than 50 articles about Java technologies and more than 500 tips and tricks for many websites that are dedicated to programming. In addition, he has written the following books:

Tehnologii XML XML în Java, Albastra

Jboss Tools 3 Developer's Guide, Packt Publishing

JSF 2.0 Cookbook, Packt Publishing

JSF 2.0 Cookbook: LITE, Packt Publishing

Pro Java 7 NIO.2, Apress

Pro Hibernate and MongoDB, Apress

Currently, Anghel is developing web applications using the latest Java technologies on the market (EJB 3.0, CDI, Spring, JSF, Struts, Hibernate, and so on). Over the past two years, he's focused on developing rich Internet applications for geographic information systems.

About the Reviewers

Mert Çalışkan is a principal software architect living in Ankara, Turkey. He has over 10 years of expertise in software development with the architectural design of Enterprise Java web applications. He is an open source advocate for software projects such as PrimeFaces, and has also been a committer and founder to various others. He is the co-author of PrimeFaces Cookbook, Packt Publishing, which is the first book to be written on PrimeFaces. He is the co-author of Beginning Spring, Wiley Publications. He is also working as an author for RebelLabs. He shares his knowledge and ideas at local and international conferences such as JavaOne2014, JavaOne2013, JDC2010, and JSFDays2008. He is also a member of the OpenLogic Expert Community and the Apache Software Foundation.

I would like to thank my family, my beloved angel Funda, our advisers at Packt Publishing, and Anghel Leonard, the author of this great book.

Michael Kurz studied computer science at the Technical University of Vienna. Since then, his main professional focus has been on web development, especially in the Java EE domain. In 2007, he started working as a senior software developer for Irian Solutions in Vienna, Austria. His main focus there is to develop JSF and Java EE applications for various customers in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Additionally, he also does JSF trainings, talks at international conferences, and is an Apache MyFaces committer.

Besides his work as a software developer, he also likes to write about JSF-related techniques. In November 2009, his first book JavaServer Faces 2.0, dpunkt.verlag was published, followed by the updated edition JavaServer Faces 2.2 in November 2013 by the same publisher.

Furthermore, he is responsible for the contents of the German online JSF tutorial at http://jsfatwork.irian.at provided by Irian, and he also writes about JSF-related techniques in his blog at http://jsflive.wordpress.com.

Thierry Leriche-Dessirier works as a freelance JEE consultant in Paris. He has 20 years of experience in web and Agile development domains. He teaches software engineering at ESIEA, and in between two baby bottles, he also writes for blogs and magazines.

Michael Müller is an IT professional with more than 30 years of experience including about 25 years in the healthcare sector. During this time, he has worked in different areas, especially project and product management, consulting, and software development. He gained international knowledge not only by targeting international markets, but also by leading external teams (from Eastern Europe and India).

Currently, he is the head of software development at the German DRG institute (http://inek.org). In this role, he is responsible for web, Java, and .NET projects. Web projects are preferably built with Java technologies such as JSF and JavaScript. He is a JSF professional user and a member of the JSR 344 (JSF) expert group.

He frequently reads books and writes reviews as well as technical papers, which are mostly published in German-printed magazines and on his website at http://it-rezension.de. Besides that, he regularly blogs about software development at http://blog.mueller-bruehl.de.

Michael has done technical reviewing for Java 8 in Action, Manning Publications Co.

To my wife Claudia and my children: thank you for your patience during night reading and other long sessions. I love you!

Luca Preziati lives in Milan and has worked for six years as a Java consultant, focusing the past five years on document management systems handling massive volumes of data. In 2014, he joined GFT Italia full time. He has considerable experience with both Alfresco and Documentum, as well as Liferay and Kettle. In his free time, he enjoys swimming, biking, playing the guitar, and wine tasting with his girlfriend.

I would like to thank all of my mentors: my parents, Ernesto and Clelia, who taught me much about work while running their own business (www.mintel.it); my brothers, Alessio and Stefano; and my girlfriend, Arianna.

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Preface

This book will cover all the important aspects (Big Ticket features) involved in developing JSF 2.2 applications. It provides clear instructions for getting the most out of JSF 2.2 and offers many exercises (more than 300 complete applications) to build impressive JSF-based web applications.

We start off with a chapter about Expression Language (EL) and cover the most important aspects of EL 2.2 and EL 3.0. We continue with a comprehensive dissertation about communication in JSF, followed by an exciting chapter about JSF 2.2 scopes. At this point, we bring into discussion most of the JSF artifacts and configurations. Further, we start a suite of very interesting topics, such as HTML5 and AJAX. After that we dissect the JSF view state concept and learn how to deal with this delicate JSF topic. Furthermore, we will discuss in detail about custom components and composite components. After this, we will talk about library contracts (themes) of JSF 2.2 resources. Finally, the last chapter will fortify your knowledge about JSF 2.2 Facelets.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Dynamic Access to JSF Application Data through Expression Language (EL 3.0), covers the main aspects of Expression Language (EL). We will cover EL 2.2 and EL 3.0, including new operators, lambda expressions, and collection object support.

Chapter 2, Communication in JSF, represents a dissection of JSF mechanisms used for ensuring communication between JSF artifacts. Therefore, we will cover context parameters, request parameters, JSF 2.2 actions on GET requests (view actions), and more.

Chapter 3, JSF Scopes – Lifespan and Use in Managed Beans Communication, teaches you to distinguish between the bad and good practices of using JSF and CDI scopes. We will discuss JSF scopes versus CDI scopes, request, session, view scope (including the new JSF 2.2 view scope), application, conversation scope, JSF 2.2 flow scope in detail (Big Ticket feature), and more.

Chapter 4, JSF Configurations Using XML Files and Annotations – Part 1, depicts the JSF artifact's configuration aspects in a learning-by-example fashion. Configuring JSF artifacts in the faces-config.xml file is pretty straightforward and boring, but if we take each artifact and exploit its potential in several use cases, then things become much more interesting.

Chapter 5, JSF Configurations Using XML Files and Annotations – Part 2, acts as a continuation of the previous chapter. Here, we will discuss configuring resource handlers (JSF 2.2's new javax.faces.WEBAPP_RESOURCES_DIRECTORY context parameter), configuring flash (JSF 2.2 FlashFactory, FlashWrapper, and flash system events), JSF 2.2 Window ID API, the injection mechanism (which, starting with JSF 2.2, is possible in most JSF artifacts), and more.

Chapter 6, Working with Tabular Data, pays tribute to the tag. Here, we will focus on the JSF 2.2 CollectionDataModel API (which supports the Collection interface in UIData). Moreover, we will learn about table pagination, deleting/editing/updating table rows, filtering, and styling JSF tables.

Chapter 7, JSF and AJAX, exploits the JSF 2.2 delay attribute for queue control of AJAX requests. It discusses how to reset value attributes using JSF 2.2 (input fields can be updated with AJAX after a validation error), AJAX and JSF 2.2 flow scope, how to customize AJAX script, and more. This is a classic chapter in almost any JSF book.

Chapter 8, JSF 2.2 – HTML5 and Upload, divides the topic into two parts. The first part is entirely dedicated to the Big Ticket feature, HTML5, and JSF 2.2 (pass-through attributes and elements). The second part is dedicated to JSF 2.2's new upload component, .

Chapter 9, JSF State Management, provides a detailed dissertation about the JSF view state. The headings of this chapter will refer to JSF's saving view state (including JSF 2.2 case insensitivity for state saving method and standardized server state serialization) and JSF 2.2 stateless view (Big Ticket feature).

Chapter 10, JSF Custom Components, is another example of a classic chapter in any JSF book. Obviously, the main topics are meant to shape the custom and composite components creation. We will focus on developing several kinds of components based on the new JSF 2.2 approach (Facelet's component tag can be declared via annotation).

Chapter 11, JSF 2.2 Resource Library Contracts – Themes, dedicates itself to the new JSF 2.2 Resource Library Contracts feature (Big Ticket feature). You will learn how to work with contracts, style JSF tables and UI components using contracts, style contracts across different kind of devices, and more.

Chapter 12, Facelets Templating, depicts the viral aspects of Facelets templating. We will focus on the declarative and programmatical aspects of Facelets.

Appendix, The JSF Life Cycle, covers a diagram of the different JSF phases.

What you need for this book

In order to run the applications in this book, you will need the following software applications:

NetBeans IDE (preferred version is 8.0, or later)

GlassFish 4.0

JSF Mojarra 2.2.6 (preferred) / MyFaces 2.2.2

Who this book is for

This book is a perfect symbiosis between JSF 2.0 and 2.2. It is dedicated to JSF developers who have previous experience and want to upgrade their knowledge to the new JSF 2.2. By fortifying your knowledge on JSF 2.0 and adding the power of JSF 2.2, you will soon become a JSF expert.

Conventions

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, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: For example, in the following example, you call a method named firstLambdaAction—the lambda expression is invoked from this method.

A block of code is set as follows:

#{get_sublist(myList, from, to)} var=t>

  #{t}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

#{playersBean.dataArrayList} binding=#{table} var=t>

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 the text like this: When the Login button is clicked, JSF will call the playerLogin method.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.

Piracy

Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.

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We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.

Questions

You can contact us at <questions@packtpub.com> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.

Chapter 1. Dynamic Access to JSF Application Data through Expression Language (EL 3.0)

Java Expression Language (EL) is a compact and powerful mechanism that enables dynamic communication in JSP and JSF-based applications (including development frameworks based on JSF such as PrimeFaces, ICEfaces, and RichFaces); we embed expressions in the presentation layer to communicate with the application logic layer. EL provides bidirectional communication, which means that we can expose application logic data to the user, but we also can submit user data to be processes. Generically speaking, EL can be used to populate HTTP requests with user data, to extract and expose data from HTTP responses, to update HTML DOM, to conditionally process data, and much more.

Note

Commonly, EL expressions will be present in JSP and JSF pages, but they can also appear outside, in faces-config.xml, for example.

In this chapter, you will see how to use EL in web pages to communicate with managed beans, which is the most common case in JSF applications. We will cover the following topics:

EL syntax, operators, and reserved words

EL immediate and deferred evaluation

EL value and method expressions

The conditional text in JSF

Write a custom EL resolver

EL syntax

In this section, you can see an overview of the main aspects of EL 2.2 and 3.0 syntax. EL supports a handful of operators and reserved words. Each of these are quickly described in the following section (more details are in the EL specification document (http://download.oracle.com/otndocs/jcp/el-3_0-fr-eval-spec/index.html)).

EL operators

EL supports the following categories of operators—arithmetic, relational, logical, conditional, empty and added starting with EL 3.0, string concatenation, assignment and semicolon operators:

EL precedence of operators

Conforming to EL specification, the precedence of operators from the highest to lowest, left to right is as follows:

[].

() (used to change the precedence of operators)

- (unary) not ! empty

* / div % mod

+- (binary)

+=

< > <= >= lt gt le ge

== != eq ne

&& and

|| or

?:

-> (lambda expression)

=

;

EL reserved words

EL defines the following reserved words:

and, or, not, eq, ne, lt, gt, le, ge, true (Boolean literal), false (Boolean literal), null, instanceof (a Java keyword to do a class comparison between objects), empty, div, and mod

EL immediate and deferred evaluation

EL evaluates expressions as immediate or deferred.

Immediate evaluation returns the result as soon as the page is first rendered. These kinds of expressions are read-only value expressions and they can be present only in tags that accept runtime expressions. They are easy to recognize after the ${} notation. Usually, they are used for arithmetic and logical operations in JSP pages.