Facelets Essentials: Guide to JavaServer Faces View Definition Framework (FirstPress)

Facelets is a templating language developed from the ground up with JavaServer Faces in mind. Created in response to the many concerns involving JavaServer Pages (JSP) when building JavaServer Faces (JSF) views, Facelets steps outside of the JSP specification and provides a highly performant, JSF–centric view technology. Facelets' top properties, templating, reuse, and ease of development, allow it to help making JSF a technology suitable for large–scale projects. One of the first things a developer using Facelets finds is that it immediately leads to a reduction in user interface code.

Facelets Essentials, the first book on Facelets, introduces you to its importance, architecture, and relationship to JSF and the Apache MyFaces web framework. Learn to create your first application using the power and flexibility Facelets offers. Then, master and apply its basic and advanced features including Unified Expression Language, templating and reuse, custom tag development, and more.

What you’ll learn

• See why you should use Facelets and the Facelets architecture
• Create your first application with Facelets
• Use the Facelets Unified Expression Language
• Explore Facelets templating and reuse, as well as the tag reference and custom tag development
• Create composition components
• Extend the ViewHandler

Who this book is for

This book is for Java web developers who are using or experienced with JavaServer Faces and perhaps learning to use the MyFaces web framework.

Table of Contents

1. Why Use Facelets
2. Creating an Application with Facelets
3. Creating an Application with Facelets
4. Tag Libraries
5. The jsfc Attribute
6. Facelets Templating and Template Clients
7. Facelets Tag Reference
8. Creating Composition Components
9. Extending Facelets
10. Extending the ViewHandler