Chapter 4
JavaServerTM Faces Technology
JavaServer Faces technology is a server-side component framework for building Java technology-based web applications.
JavaServer Faces technology consists of the following:
An API for representing components and managing their state; handling events, server-side validation, and data conversion; defining page navigation; supporting internationalization and accessibility; and providing extensibility for all these features
Tag libraries for adding components to web pages and for connecting components to server-side objects
JavaServer Faces technology provides a well-defined programming model and various tag libraries. These features significantly ease the burden of building and maintaining web applications with server-side UIs. With minimal effort, you can complete the following tasks:
Create a web page
Drop components onto a web page by adding component tags
Bind components on a page to server-side data
Wire component-generated events to server-side application code
Save and restore application state beyond the life of server requests
Reuse and extend components through customization
This chapter provides an overview of JavaServer Faces technology. After explaining what a JavaServer Faces application is and going over some of the primary benefits of using JavaServer Faces technology, it describes the process of creating a simple JavaServer Faces application. This chapter also introduces the JavaServer Faces lifecycle by describing the example JavaServer Faces application progressing through the lifecycle stages.
The following topics are addressed here: