JavaServer Faces Is Here
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
April 1, 2004 —
(Page 1 of 2)
It took more than two years, but JavaServer Faces (JSF), aka JSR 127, is finally available. In theory, JSF will help new developers build JavaServer-based Web applications quickly by assembling reusable user interface (UI) components in a page, connecting components to an application data source, and wiring client-generated events to server-side event handlers. Essentially, JSF provides a single application programming interface (API) set for creating interoperable components for application servers and component libraries.
Specifically, that means JSR 127 comes with APIs for UI components and managing their state, handling events and input validation, and easier and more flexible page navigation. It also includes a JavaServer Pages (JSP) custom tag library for expressing a JSF interface inside a JSP page.
Like Swing, JSF provides the usual UI widgets, such as buttons, checkboxes, etc; a model for creating custom widgets; and ways to handle client-generated events on the server. Don't mistake this, though, for just another way to create Web-based user interfaces. It's more than that. JSF's two strongest points are that it enables your developers to create Web applications that aren't specific to a particular rendering kit, and it lets you easily connect a J2EE app server to the user interface.
Without JSF, when you build an interface, if you're using Java Standard Tag Library (JSTL), JSP Expression Language, or even if you just use Struts and assume that HTML is good enough, you still end up with a UI that works well only with a particular browser. That might be good enough in some corporate environments, but wouldn't it be better to have the flexibility to build an application that you could write once and run on any interface from a smartphone to a Pocket PC to a workstation? Hmmm. Write once, run anywhere. Where have I heard that before?
The ability to easily link a J2EE application and its associated database management system (DBMS) is not a small deal. There have always been many ways for J2EE to work with JSP or other ways to create active Web pages, but that was part of the problem. And, I might add, it was one area where .NET clearly has outshone Java. There was no standard way to present J2EE-based applications to users…until now.
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