JSF Newbie question

[frank]

Hi all,

I've been working with JSP/Servlets for a while and decided to check
out JSF. AFter reviewing some simple tutorials and what not I'm a bit
confused at what they really offer. The component library seems very
limited. Maybe I'm missing how JSF is normally used. Is it normally
used with other components? Anyone who can shed some light on their
experiences with JSF, its greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Frank

 

[Mark Space]

Hi all,

I've been working with JSP/Servlets for a while and decided to check
out JSF. AFter reviewing some simple tutorials and what not I'm a bit
confused at what they really offer. The component library seems very
limited. Maybe I'm missing how JSF is normally used. Is it normally
used with other components? Anyone who can shed some light on their
experiences with JSF, its greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Frank

I probably know less about it than you, but I was reading the JSF FAQ
the other day, and there's a good comparison between JSF and other web
technologies (like Struts) that might help you out.

http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Projects/JavaServerFacesSpecFaq

The short answer is that JSF *is* lacking in the web server department.
But it tries to be more flexible and more general, so if you're doing
a lot of stuff besides just Tomcat, JSF may integrate better with your
other technologies. That's what I got out of it, anyway.

 

[Moiristo]

I've been working with JSP/Servlets for a while and decided to check
out JSF. AFter reviewing some simple tutorials and what not I'm a bit
confused at what they really offer.

Short answer: the MVC-model. JSF enables separation of web pages and
logic, which can be a great advantage to maintain a site. It is better
than Struts, because Struts is less strict, you can still have logic in
your web pages and in the controller part. Furthermore, JSF has backing
beans, which struts (if im right) doesn't have.

The library is indeed very limited, but the idea is that it is very easy
to create custom components and share them with others. Examples are
Apache Tomahawk, Tobago and Sandbox.


Moiristo

 

[ritz]

Short answer: the MVC-model. JSF enables separation of web pages and
logic, which can be a great advantage to maintain a site. It is better
than Struts, because Struts is less strict, you can still have logic in
your web pages and in the controller part. Furthermore, JSF has backing
beans, which struts (if im right) doesn't have.

The library is indeed very limited, but the idea is that it is very easy
to create custom components and share them with others. Examples are
Apache Tomahawk, Tobago and Sandbox.


Moiristo

IMO this is basically a great utility for creating rapid and rich UI as
they claim ie the applications need more attention towards GUI ...

 

[frank]

IMO this is basically a great utility for creating rapid and rich UI as
they claim ie the applications need more attention towards GUI ...

I guess what I'm trying to see is that as more of a programmer than a
web UI developer does JSF really make it less tedious for me to design
a "nice and clean" looking web page. From what I see the answer is no,
you still need to create custom stylesheets and layouts. Anyone have
experience with Shale? How does that rank up?

On a side note, are there any frameworks that help in the actual design
and look and feel of a site?

 

[Chris Smith]

I guess what I'm trying to see is that as more of a programmer than a
web UI developer does JSF really make it less tedious for me to design
a "nice and clean" looking web page. From what I see the answer is no,
you still need to create custom stylesheets and layouts.

The answer is no. This is not the problem that JSF is meant to solve.
JSF is about how to link your HTML pages to back end logic, and avoid
some of the tedium involved in handling request/response architectures,
refilling forms after validation errors, handling navigation between
pages, etc. The component model is suitable for building advanced
components, and many third-party components can be found. (I don't
agree that it's easy to create components, as Moiristo said; rather,
it's unnecessarily difficult... but often still worthwhile.) These
complex components, though, are an extra bonus on top of the nuts-and-
bolts plumbing that JSF is meant to provide.

Anyone have
experience with Shale? How does that rank up?

I wouldn't use Shale, actually. I think it's a lot of solutions in
search of problems, and the solutions make day-to-day work considerably
more difficult. It doesn't provide any kind of help for web design,
either.

On a side note, are there any frameworks that help in the actual design
and look and feel of a site?

I'm not aware of any. Actually, I can't imagine what such a framework
would do.

 

[frankmfs]

The answer is no. This is not the problem that JSF is meant to solve.
JSF is about how to link your HTML pages to back end logic, and avoid
some of the tedium involved in handling request/response architectures,
refilling forms after validation errors, handling navigation between
pages, etc. The component model is suitable for building advanced
components, and many third-party components can be found. (I don't
agree that it's easy to create components, as Moiristo said; rather,
it's unnecessarily difficult... but often still worthwhile.) These
complex components, though, are an extra bonus on top of the nuts-and-
bolts plumbing that JSF is meant to provide.


I wouldn't use Shale, actually. I think it's a lot of solutions in
search of problems, and the solutions make day-to-day work considerably
more difficult. It doesn't provide any kind of help for web design,
either.


I'm not aware of any. Actually, I can't imagine what such a framework
would do.

How well does JSF work with things such as DOJO toolkit for JS?

Also is there any specific IDE that makes JSF development more
advantageous?

Thanks.
Frank

 

[Timo Stamm]

How well does JSF work with things such as DOJO toolkit for JS?

Early this year, Jacob Hookom said:

| For AJAX, we’re planning on pursuing an extension to JSF 1.2 called
| Avatar, based on various EG members’ ideas that will allow any and all
| parts of JSF to be used in AJAX applications. Because JSF isn’t tied
| to the action/page paradigm, parts of the component tree can be
| gnostically processed without requiring special cases/development.
|
| The next revision of JSF (2.0) will probably include a case for a
| “Partial Faces Request” (AJAX). Also, there will probably be more use
| of annotations to ease the component development aspect of the spec.

Source: http://www.virtuas.com/articles/webframework-sweetspots.html

JSF 1.2 is released by now, but I don't know how well this "Avatar"
extension turned out. I am afraid that you would have to create
counterparts to Dojo toolkit components in JSF yourself, and I would
only recommend this to experienced programmers.

Also is there any specific IDE that makes JSF development more
advantageous?

There is the Java Studio Creator:
http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscreator/


Timo

 

[Chris Smith]

Source: http://www.virtuas.com/articles/webframework-sweetspots.html

JSF 1.2 is released by now, but I don't know how well this "Avatar"
extension turned out. I am afraid that you would have to create
counterparts to Dojo toolkit components in JSF yourself, and I would
only recommend this to experienced programmers.

I'm not particularly impressed by it. Actually, I'm not particularly
impressed by much of the AJAX stuff going on right now with JSF. It is
all written from the perspective that "AJAX" means "replace part of my
page without reloading the whole thing", which is a limiting model. It
prevents anything from happening without completely reloading at least a
component. I can't see anything in Avatar that frees me from that
model. Perhaps I'm not looking hard enough... but if that's the case,
people need to make things more obvious.

Dojo doesn't seem to hold onto those limitations, so it looks unlikely
that Avatar helps much with Dojo components.