Is it OK to mix up the ?-Faces in JSF.

Question

Hi..
I'm new to JaveServerFaces and played a little bit with ICEFaces and i would try richfaces. So the Basic Question is :

Can i use these two addons together or does it get me into troubles?

Can someone recommend me some other packages ? (specially for netbeans)

Answer 1

Component frameworks such as JSF are designed with using multiple component libraries in mind, the idea being that JSF isn't able to provide you with all the components you need, and nor is any one library. So the idea is for other component libraries to extend and augment the base JSF components. You should be able to mix and match ICEFaces and Richfaces just fine.

While there may be compatibility issues between different libraries sometimes, and you may run into problems in certain scenarios, all in all, I think you should be fine.

Answer 2

In this particular case, I'd be hesitant. IceFaces runs on its own servlet (Direct To DOM) which is rather neat but a lot of times the D2D handler doesn't play well with other tags. Not all of the time, obviously, but a lot of the times. You'll need to experiment on which tags you need from one or the other.

Also, as far as other frameworks to suggest, take a look at Seam. It is a killer app for JSF IMO.

Answer 3

If you using Maven this is easy( if you don't I recommend you look on it, NetBeans 6.7 has great Maven support ).

Simply add such dependency:

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.richfaces.ui</groupId>
            <artifactId>richfaces-ui</artifactId>
            <version>3.3.1.GA</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.icefaces</groupId>
            <artifactId>icefaces</artifactId>
            <version>1.8.1</version>
        </dependency>

Also you need add JBoss repository to main pom.

        <repository>
            <id>jboss-repository</id>
            <name>jboss repository</name>
            <url>http://repository.jboss.com/maven2/
            </url>
        </repository>

And all work fine in NetBeans.

Answer 4

I'd be very careful combining these two. Both cover pretty much the same areas and using them together will no doubt introduce many hard-to-find errors.

Is there any reason why you want both?

You may find JSF Matrix helpful.