Eclipse Corner Article

WTP Tutorials - JavaServer Faces Tools Tutorial

Summary
In this tutorial we will build and execute a JavaServer Faces application, and highlight the features contributed by the JSF Tools Project.

By Raghu Srinivasan, Oracle Corporation.
June 15, 2009


Introduction

In this tutorial we will create and execute a web application with JavaServer Faces capabilities. The WTP JSF Tools project has provided features that simplifies application building, configuration and execution. These include the Web Page Editor for visually editing a JSF-JSP web page, syntactic and semantic validation of a JSF-JSP page, the Faces Configuration Editor for editing the application configuration resource file.

You may wish to visit Building and Running a Web Application before attempting this tutorial. That tutorial covers setup of the server instance that this tutorial does not.

Setup

Make the Web Page Editor the default editor for JSP pages

The JSF Tools Project-contributed Web Page Editor (WPE) is NOT registered as the default editor for JSP files. You can make the WPE the default editor for JSP files by following these steps:

Create a JavaServer Faces Project

Create a New Dynamic Web Application with the name of JSFTutorial. Set the target runtime to the Apache Tomcat 6.0
In the configuration section, select the JavaServer Faces Project v1.2. Skip the next two panels to get to the JSF Capabilities page.

New Dynamic Web Application


On the JSF Capabilities page, from the drop-down for the Type of the JSF Library, select User Library.

JSF Capabilities page


Click on the Download library icon. The Download Library dialog is displayed with the list of providers for the JSF implementation JAR files. Select the library from Sun Microsystem. Click Next. Accept the license and hit Finish

JSF Capabilities page


The tool downloads the JAR files, creates a JDT User Library and adds it to the current project. Select the checkbox for the new library if it is not selected. Next, select the Manage libraries icon.

JSF Capabilities page



Create a JDT User Library to hold the JSTL jar file. Seelct OK.

JSF Capabilities page



The JSTL library is displayed in the JSF Capabilities dialog. Select the libray and hit Finish

JSF Capabilities page



Your JSF application has been created. Note that the web.xml file has been updated with the Faces Servlet and servlet-mapping, a stub JSF application configuration file (faces-config.xml) has been created, and the build path has been updated with the implementation jars.



If you have an existing Dynamic Web Application, it is possible to add JSF capabilities by going to:
Project Properties > Project Facets > Add\Remove Project Facets…

Create a JSF JSP Page

Use the JSP Page wizard to create a page called login.jsp in the Web Content folder of the new application. In the Select Templates page of the wizard, select the New JSP(html) template. Click Finish. The page will be opened in the Web Page Editor as shown below


Web Page Editor


Open the Properties View. Right-mouse click on the designer canvas and from the context menu, select Show->Properties. Wait for the "Reading Properties" dialog to disappear.

Add a CommandButton to the canvas.


WPE-Add CommandButton


Add a PanelGrid
Modify the components inside the Panel Grid


WPE-Add PanelGrid


In the Project Explorer, expand the node, JSFTutorial->WebContent. Double-click on faces-config.xml . This will launch the Faces Configuration editor. Select the ManagedBean tab.

Faces Config Editor Managed Bean

Click on the Add button. This will launch the New Managed Bean wizard. Select the option, Create a new Java class . In the next wizard panel, enter the package as, com.tutorial and the Name of the class as LoginBean . Click the Finish button.

New Managed Bean

This will create the Java class and register it as a managed bean. Save the Faces Configuration editor.To edit the Java class, click on the hyperlink, ManagedBean class in the Managed bean page as shown in the figure below. This will launch the Java editor.

Faces Configuration Editor - Managed Bean tab


Edit the Java class, com.tutorial.LoginBean . Add the following code and save.

LoginBean
In the Project Explorer view, right-mouse click on the JSP page, login.jsp and from the context menu, select the Validate option. Note that the page should now be valid.

In the Source Page of the Web Page Editor, add the JSF tag, <h:inputSecret value="#{}"></h:inputSecret> . With the cursor inside the brackets, hit Ctrl+spacebar . You should see a pop-up with a list of all the implicit objects plus the managed bean defined above. Select the managed bean, loginBean

Validate bean properties in EL

Enter the name of a property, say x, that is not defined in the managed bean and save the change. The editor will report a warning that the property cannot be resolved.

Validate bean properties in EL

Delete the invalid property. Hit Ctrl+spacebar after the '.' in the bean name. You should see a pop-up listing the properties defined in the managed bean. Select password from the menu.

Content Assist

Create a Java class, com.tutorial.validatePassword that implements the Validator interface and save.

Validator
In the Project Explorer, expand the node, JSFTutorial->WebContent. Double-click on faces-config.xml . This will launch the faces-config editor. Select the Component tab. Expand the Validators section.

Faces Config Editor Component tab

Click on the Add button. Select the Browse button associated with the Validator Class field and select the com.tutorial.ValidatePassword class. Save the changes.

Faces Config Editor register Validator

Add the JSF tag, <f:validator id=""></f:validator > . With the cursor inside the double-quote, hit Ctrl+spacebar . You should see a pop-up with a list of all the standard validators plus those registered in the faces-config file. Select Validate Password .

Content assist for validators


We will now move the static strings we have used in the page to a resource bundle. To do this, add a file called, messages.properties in the folder com.tutorial . Define the properties as shown below and save the file.

Content assist for resource bundle

Add the JSF tag, loadBundle as shown below. You can drag-and-drop the tag from the JSF Core section of the Palette View.

Content assist for resource bundle

Delete the string, Name in the value attribute of the outputLabel tag. Position the curson inside the brackets and hit Ctrl+spacebar . You should see a pop-up with a list that includes the msg variable that you defined in the loadBundle tag. Select it.

Content assist for resource bundle

Enter a dot after msg and and hit Ctrl+spacebar . You should see a pop-up with a list of properties defined in the messages.properties file. Select the property, name .

Content assist for resource bundle


Complete the login page as shown below.

Complete login page

Create a new JSF page, welcome.jsp as shown below.

Complete login page

Faces Configuration Resource Editor

The JSF Tools project includes a special editor for the faces configuration resource files. The following section gives a brief introduction to the editor. A comprehensive tutorial detailing all the features of the editor will be published soon.
Double-click on the faces-config.xml file to launch the Faces configuration editor. Switch to the Navigation tab.

Faces Configuration Editor



Faces Configuration Editor

Testing the JSF JSP Page

1) We will now execute the page against the Apache Tomcat server. Choose Run on Server using the context menu while selecting the login.jsp page in the navigator.



2) Choose your Apache Tomcat server and set it up as required if you had not already done so.

3) Click Finish. You should see from the Console view that the Tomcat server starts and then you should see the executing login page appear in the Web Browser like below.



Click on the login button. You should navigate to the welcome page.


Congratulations! You have created and executed your first JavaServer Faces application using the new Eclipse WTP JSF Tools.