JSF 2.0 Problem (faces-config)

Question

We have faces-config.xml in JSF 1.0 where we entry about managed-beans, dependencies & navigations etc.

I was developing a sample project using JSF 2.0. But, as I don't know annotation, I need to include face-config.xml externally. Please, provide the solution for it, as in JSF 2.0 we don't need to include it. What is reason behind it? How do we set a bean as managed-bean. What is annotation? How is it used?

Answer 1

See the annotations tutorial.

For JSF, you can do something like this (using the @ManagedBean annotation):

@ManagedBean
public class YourManagedBean {
    ...
}

Answer 2

(...) in JSF 2.0 we don't need to include it. What is reason behind it?

In three words: ease of development. There is just less code to write -- boilerplate code is removed, defaults are used whenever possible, and annotations are used to reduce the need for deployment descriptors.

How do we set a bean as managed-bean. What is annotation? How is it used?

Managed beans are identified using the @ManagedBean annotation. The scope of the bean is also specified using annotations (@RequestScoped, @SessionScoped, @ApplicationScoped, etc).

So the following in JSF 1.0:

<managed-bean>
  <managed-bean-name>foo</managed-bean-name>
  <managed-bean-class>com.foo.Foo</managed-bean-class>
  <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean>
</managed-bean>

Can be rewritten as such in JSF 2.0:

@ManagedBean
@SessionScoped
public class Foo {
    //...
}

And referred like this in a Facelet page:

<h:inputText label="eMailID" id="emailId" 
value="#{foo.email}" size="20" required="true"/>

(By default, the name of the managed bean will be the name of the annotated class, with the first letter of the class in lowercase.)

See also

• What’s New in JSF 2?

Answer 3

You can employ a faces-config.xml in JSF2 exactly the same way you did in JSF 1.x. In fact, although annotations can often be used in place of a faces-config.xml file, not every JSF feature is available strictly through annotations, so sometimes you need a faces-config file even in JSF2.

There is one small difference, however, and that is that you should update the xml schema version reference in your faces-config file to reflect schema changes that came into effect with JSF2.