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 18, 2007
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:
- Navigate to "Window" -> "Preferences..." -> "General" ->
"Editors" -> "File Associations"
- In the "File types" section, select "*.jsp"
- In the "Associated editors" section, select "Web Page Editor"
- Select the "Default" button
Register JSF libraries
This feature allows for a named sets of jars to be created for
use with JSF Applications. We will be creating a library containing the
Sun JSF RI
Select Windows->Preferences->Web and XML->->JavaServer Faces
Tools->Libraries. Click on the New.. button to add a new library.
Create the JSF Libraries as shown in the following figures. Check the is
JSF Implementation check box when adding the Sun JSF RI library.
Create another JSF Library called JSTL that has the JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library jar as shown below.
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.

On the JSF Capabilities page, select the radio button adjacent to
the JSF Library JSF-RI-1.2. Add the JSTL library.

If you
deploy the JSF web application to a server runtime that includes the JSF
1.2 reference implementation, then you should select the Server
Supplied JSF implementation option.
Click on the Finish button to create the JavaServer Faces
Application. You may be prompted to accept the license for the Web App
DTD from Sun. You may also be asked to choose the J2EE perspective upon
completion. In both cases accept.
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

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.
- In the Palette View, click on the section JSF HTML to display the list of components.
- Drag-and-drop the CommandButton to the canvas.
Note that the editor wraps the CommandButton with <f:view> and <h:form> tag.
- In the properties view, click on Quick Edit.
- Set the Value attribute to Login.
- Set the Action attribute to login
Add a PanelGrid
- From the Palette View, Drag-and-drop the PanelGrid to the canvas. Notice the feedback on the drop target.
- Drop the Panel Grid before the Command Button, but inside the Form tag. The Panel Grid is created with a predefined set of OutputText components.
Modify the components inside the Panel Grid
- Click on the OutputText Item2 and hit Delete
- Add a InputText (Text Input in the Palette view) tag after Item1 and before Item3
- Delete the OutputText, Item 4
- Add a InputSecret (Secret Input in the Palette view) tag after Item3
- Click on the OutputText, Item1. Change its value in the Source View to Name
- Click on the OutputText, Item3. Change its value in the Source View to Password
- Click on the Preview tab to see the page rendered in a browser
- Click on the InputText tag next to Name. In the Property View, set the value attribute to #{loginBean.name}.
- Save the page. The editor will flag a warning indicating that the variable, loginBean cannot be resolved.
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.
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.
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.
Edit the Java class,
com.tutorial.LoginBean.
Add the following code and save.
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
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.
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.
Create a Java class,
com.tutorial.validatePassword
that implements the
Validator
interface and save.
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.
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.
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
.
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.
Add the JSF tag,
loadBundle
as shown below. You can drag-and-drop the tag from the JSF Core section of the Palette View.
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.
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
.
Complete the login page as shown below.
Create a new JSF page,
welcome.jsp
as shown below.
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.
- Add the login.jsp and welcome.jsp to the
Navigation tab. Select the Page control from the Palette and
drop it on the Navigation tab. Choose the page in the resulting Select
JSP File dialog.
- Connect the two pages. Click on the Link control in the
Palette, select the login page and draw a line to the welcome
page. Select the line in the Navigation tab and in the property view,
set the value of the from-outcome to login .
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.