Oracle JDeveloper 11g Release 2 Tutorials - Building a Simple JSF Application

Building a Simple JSF Application

You will use wizards to quickly create an application and a project, and a blank JSF page. To design the page you will use the visual editor to add an input field, a button, and a display field.

Then you will write a method that takes the value entered in the input field and show it in the display field. To hook up the method to the button on the page, you will create a managed bean and register the method on the button. When you test run the page, the page in the browser will look like this:

Start page in browser

Purpose	Duration	Application
This tutorial shows you how to build and run a simple JSF application. To see the complete application you will create, click the Download button to download a zip of the final application, and then unzip it in your JDeveloper `mywork` folder.	20 minutes

Step 1: Create a New Application and Project

From the main menu, choose File > New. In the New Gallery, expand the General category and select Applications. Then in the Items list, select Custom Application and click OK.

The JDeveloper application is the highest level in the organizational structure. While you are developing your application, it stores information about the objects you are working with. At the same time, it keeps track of your projects and all environment settings.

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Based on prebuilt templates, a JDeveloper application allows you to specify a predefined type of environment, depending on the type of application you want to create (web application, Java application, and so on). Application templates provide you with a quick way to create the project structure for standard applications with the appropriate combination of features already specified. The application template also filters the work you do in JDeveloper such that the choices available are focused only on the features you are working with.

In this tutorial, you will use the Custom Application template, which makes available objects associated with all the features that JDeveloper supports in a single project.

Once you have created an application using a suitable template, you can still add new projects to the application and specify what features are to be included. To do this, in the Application Navigator, right-click the application name and choose New Project. In the New Gallery, you can select any type of project in the Items list.

To follow along with the example, enter JSFApplication as the application name.

The application template you select determines the initial project structure, that is, the named project folders within the application workspace, and the application libraries that will be added. The project or projects in the application define the associated features.

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A JDeveloper project, which is used to logically group files that are related, keeps track of the source files, packages, classes, images, and other elements that your program may need. Projects manage environment variables such as the source and output paths used for compiling and running your program. Projects also maintain compiler, runtime, and debugging options so that you can customize the behavior of those tools per project.

You can add multiple projects to your application to easily access, modify, and reuse your source code. Different projects might contain files representing different tiers of a multi-tier application, for instance, or different subsystems of a complex application. These files can reside in any directory and still be contained within a single project.

Accept the defaults and click Finish.

The Projects panel in the Application Navigator should look like this:

A new application created from a template appears in the Application Navigator already partitioned into tiered projects, with the associated features set in each project.

Read more... Projects are displayed as the top level in the hierarchy in the Application Navigator. The Custom Application template that you used for your application creates one project using a default project name (or the project name you entered).

In the Application Navigator you can collapse and expand any panel. You adjust the size of panels by dragging the splitter between two panels. To group and sort items in the Projects panel, use the

Navigator Display Options dropdown menu. For application operations, you can click

Application Menu and choose an option from the dropdown menu.

JDeveloper has the capability of recognizing many different file types, displaying each in its appropriate viewer or editor when you double-click the file in the Application Navigator. Closing an application or project closes all open editors or viewers for files in that application or project and unloads the files from memory.

Note: Nodes in italics in the Application Navigator mean that the elements have not yet been saved. A project node is bold when a file in the project is selected.

From the main menu, choose Application > Show Overview. The Application Overview window opens in the editor window area.

Part of Application Overview window

All objects that you create within JDeveloper appear in the Application Overview file summary pages, arranged by object type. As you create new files and artifacts, you can view them filtered by status and project.

You can optionally close the Application Overview window, since you will not be using it to create objects for this application.

Step 2: Create a JSF Page

In the Application Navigator, right-click the project and choose New > Web Tier > JSF/Facelets > Page, then click OK.
In the Create JSF Page dialog, enter Start.jsf as the file name. Make sure Facelets is the selected document type.

The JSF pages you create for your application using JavaServer Faces can be Facelets documents (which have file extension .jsf) or JSP documents written in XML syntax (which have file extension .jspx).

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You can create both types of JSF pages with the Create JSF Page dialog, opening it from:

The New Gallery
The JSF navigation diagrammer
The ADF task flow diagrammer (available only in the Studio edition of JDeveloper)

On the Page Layout page, select Blank Page. On the Managed Bean page, select Do Not Automatically Expose UI Components in a Managed Bean.

In the Create JSF Page dialog, you can optionally define some aspects of the look and feel for the new page, and you can specify whether or not components on the page are exposed in a managed bean, to allow programmatic manipulation of the UI components.

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By default components are not exposed to managed beans. If you wish to bind components to managed beans, select one of the automatic binding options on the Managed Bean page in the dialog.

Managed Bean tab, Create JSF Page

Note: The option to bind to an existing managed bean is enabled only if the application has a managed bean already configured.

If you choose to automatically expose UI components in a managed bean, JDeveloper automatically creates a backing bean for any new JSF page that you create. When you drop a component on the page, JDeveloper inserts a bean property for each component, and uses the binding attribute to bind component instances to those properties, allowing the bean to accept and return component instances.

If you choose not to let JDeveloper use automatic component binding at page creation time, you can use the Property Inspector to manually bind any component on the page. For example, if you insert an input text component, click the

dropdown menu at the end of the component's Binding field in the Property Inspector and choose Edit. Then in the Edit Property dialog, you can create a managed bean for the page if one does not already exist.

Property Inspector, Binding property, Edit

Property Inspector, Binding property, Edit

Click OK.

By default JDeveloper displays the new JSF Facelets page in the visual editor.

You can start editing the page using JSF HTML and JSF Core components from the JSF page in the Component Palette.

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When you create a new JSF page as a Facelets document type (with file extension .jsf), JDeveloper automatically creates a starter page structure with two xmlns attributes for the JSF Core and JSF HTML tag libraries. The other elements included in a starter file are elements for laying out a page, specifically everything else within <f:view> and </f:view>. For example, the following code is generated for the new page:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<f:view xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
        xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html">
  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <h:head>
      <title>Start</title>
    </h:head>
    <h:body>
      <h:form></h:form>
    </h:body>
  </html>
</f:view>

When you complete the steps for creating a JSF page, the Application Navigator should look something like this:

In the project, the folders and files that conform to the Java EE Web module directory structure are:

Web Content folder: Contains the pages you create, along with other files that must be visible to the client browser (such as stylesheet files and images) for your application.
/WEB-INF/ folder: Contains the required Web Application Deployment Descriptor (web.xml) and the JSF configuration file (faces-config.xml).
web.xml file: The web application deployment descriptor for your application. This is an XML file describing the components that make up your application, along with any initialization parameters and container-managed security constraints that you want the server to enforce for you.
faces-config.xml file: Where you register the JSF application's configuration resources, such as validators, converters, managed beans, and navigation rules.

Step 3: Design the UI

In the editor window, click the Design tab at the bottom to make sure the visual editor of Start.jsf is in focus.

The tabs at the bottom of the editor window for a given file are the editor tabs.

Read more... Selecting an editor tab opens the file in that editor or viewer. For example, to switch from the visual editor to the XML editor, select the Source tab.

The tabs at the top of the editor window are the document tabs. Selecting a document tab gives that file focus, bringing it to the foreground of the window in the current editor.

In the Component Palette, select JSF from the dropdown list, then expand the HTML panel.

Facelets uses the concept of XML namespaces to support JSF tag libraries. The libraries that provide the JSF components are:

The JavaServer Faces HTML tag library, which contains tags representing common HTML user interface components.
The JavaServer Faces Core tag library, which contains tags that perform core actions such as event handling and data conversion.

JDeveloper provides the Component Palette to drag and drop components onto your JSF pages in the visual editor. Help information is provided for each component, explaining its purpose and its attributes. To find such information, right-click an item in a panel in the Component Palette and choose Help.

Click and drag Input Text to the visual editor, then drop it on the blank page to add an input text field.

The editor breadcrumb links at the bottom of the visual editor show the path of links from the currently selected component or tag back to its root parent component or tag.

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When designing a page in the visual editor, you can use the breadcrumb links to select an existing component or tag on the page. When you click a component or tag in the editor breadcrumb links, JDeveloper shows the selected component or tag on the page with a dropdown menu icon at the top right corner of the selected item. When you click the dropdown menu, JDeveloper displays a context menu of actions that you can perform on the selected component or tag.

Visual editor, JSF page

The visual editor is also fully integrated with the Structure window. While inserting, copying, or moving JSF components, you may select an insertion point on the page in the visual editor or in the Structure window in relation to a target page element. JDeveloper provides visual cues to indicate the location of the insertion point before, after, or contained inside a target component.

After inserting components, you can set the properties of the components either using a dialog displayed at the time you drop the component, if one is required, or later using the Property Inspector.

Your application pages can also use a style sheet, either one provided by JDeveloper or one of your own. You can add a style sheet to a page at the time you create it, or later, by editing the page. If you have added a style sheet to your page, you can set the text on the page, such as the heading text, to a style chosen from the dropdown list:

Style dropdown list in visual editor toolbar

Style dropdown list in visual editor toolbar

Click and drag Command Button to the page, then drop it next to the input field you just added. In the Property Inspector, Common section, click in the Value field and change the default text to Click here.

While working with JSF components in JDeveloper, you can view and set component tag attributes in the Property Inspector.

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Most of the standard JSF component tag attributes accept value expressions, that is, #{expression} using JSF Expression Language (EL). For example, #{personData.username}.

When you add a component to the JSF page, the Property Inspector displays the supported attributes for the component tag grouped in these categories:

Common: Commonly used attributes, which varies from component to component. Also includes the attributes id and binding. The id is the unique identifier of a component, which must be a valid XML name; you cannot use leading numeric values or spaces in the id name. The binding is the EL expression that binds a component instance to a property in a bean.
Appearance: Basic attributes that control the visible parts, including title and accessKey.
Style: HTML style and presentation attributes such as background, border, cellpadding, cellspacing, font, margin, style, and outline. Most of the attributes that the HTML 4.01 specification declares for corresponding HTML elements are supported.
Behavior: Basic attributes that control the component's behavior, including HTML pass-through attributes such as disabled and readOnly. Also includes an Internationalization section for HTML language translation attributes such as lang and dir.
JavaScript: HTML event attributes (for associating client-side scripts with events) such as onclick, onkeypress, and onmouseover.

To see descriptive information about a component's attribute, right-click in the property name or field in the Property Inspector. A resizable popup window appears, where you can view a description of the property in a scrollable Property Help box. You can also open the property popup window by clicking the

dropdown menu.

Property Inspector

In the Component Palette, select HTML from the dropdown list, then expand the Common panel.
Drag and drop Line Break next to the command button on the page.
In the Structure window, right-click br and choose Insert After br > JSF.
In the Insert JSF Item dialog, select Output Text and click OK.

This should add the output text component below the input text field.
In the Property Inspector of the output text component, Common section, delete the default text in the Value field and press Enter, leaving the field blank.
Click Save All to save your work.

The visual editor should look similar to this:

There should be an input field in which a user can enter data, and a button to initiate an action. The output text field is no longer visible on the page because you have deleted the default output text value.

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Click the Source tab at the bottom of the editor window to switch to the XML editor. Within <h:form><h:form/> you should see the code for the four components you added:

<h:form>
  <h:inputText/>
  <h:commandButton value="Click here"/>
  <br/>
  <h:outputText/>
<h:form/>

Step 4: Modify the Behavior Through Code

You will create a method and attach it to the button on the page. The method will capture the value entered by the user in the input field, then display the value below the input field.

In the editor window, click the Start.jsf document tab at the top.
From the main menu, choose Design > Page Properties.
In the Page Properties dialog, select the Component Binding tab and select Auto Bind. Then click New next to the Managed Bean dropdown list.

A managed bean is any application JavaBean that is either registered in the JSF configuration file faces-config.xml or has special managed bean annotations in the bean class.

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Either way, you use a symbolic name to identify the class to be used to instantiate the bean, and you use the symbolic name to refer to the bean's properties and methods. Because you are using a symbolic name rather than referring to the bean directly, the presentation is kept separate from the application logic, which means that you can change the model without affecting the view.

When automatic component binding is enabled on a page, JDeveloper automatically exposes UI components on the page to properties in a backing bean and uses the binding attribute to bind component instances to those properties. A backing bean is a managed bean that contains logic and properties for UI components specific to a page. The JavaBean can be any existing class (such as a data transfer class), or it can be a class specific to a page only (hence it is called a backing bean). Backing beans can act as the state holder of user input and the UI components' data, and they are useful for implementing validation methods and event handler methods that invoke back end application code with component values.

When you enable automatic component binding in the Page Properties dialog, you can choose to bind components to an existing managed bean or you can configure a new managed bean and then create the backing bean for the page.

You can turn off or turn on automatic component binding by deselecting or selecting the Auto Bind checkbox in the Page Properties dialog. For example, if you want JDeveloper to automatically generate properties and accessor methods for some components you are adding to a page, turn on automatic component binding just before adding the components, then turn it off after you're done adding.

In the Create Managed Bean dialog, enter the following values or select the option:

Field or Option	Value
Bean Name	`backing_start`
Class Name	`StartInfo`
Package	`project1.backing`
Extends	`java.lang.Object`
Scope	request
Registration	Annotations

The scope of a managed bean determines the scope within which the bean is stored. The following are the valid scopes for a bean:

application: The bean is available for the duration of the web application. This is helpful for global beans such as LDAP directories.
session: The bean is available to the client throughout the client's session.
request: The bean is available from the time it is instantiated until a response is sent back to the client. This is usually the life of the current page.
none: The bean is instantiated each time it is referenced. This is helpful if the bean is referenced within another bean.

Starting in JSF 2.0, you have the option of using managed bean annotations in the bean class instead of registering managed beans in faces-config.xml. When you choose to use managed bean annotations, JDeveloper adds the annotations in the JavaBean class file. For example:

@ManagedBean(name="backing_mypage")

      @RequestScoped

      public class MypageInfo {

        ...
      

      }

If you choose to register JavaBeans in faces-config.xml, you do so either by editing the XML in the configuration file manually or using the configuration file overview editor, which provides creation dialogs and browse features for finding class file references for your beans.

Overview editor for JSF configuration file

Overview editor for JSF configuration file

When you use the configuration file overview editor to create and configure a managed bean, JDeveloper adds relevant code in faces-config.xml for you. For example:

<managed-bean>

	    <managed-bean-name>backing_mypage</managed-bean-name>

    <managed-bean-class>project1.backing.MypageInfo</managed-bean-class>

    <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>

    <!--oracle-jdev-comment:managed-bean-jsp-link:1Mypage.jsf-->

</managed-bean>

The comment line  tells you that the managed bean is the backing bean for the Mypage.jsf page when automatic component binding is turned on.

Using managed bean annotations reduces the size and complexity of the faces-config.xml file, which can grow quite substantially.

Click OK to close the Create Managed Bean dialog.

You should see backing_start selected in the Managed Bean dropdown list.
Click OK to close the Page Properties dialog.

JDeveloper displays the backing bean file StartInfo.java in the source editor.

Note the managed bean annotations JDeveloper added for you:

@ManagedBean(name="backing_start")

      @RequestScoped

      public class StartInfo {

        ...
      

      }

When automatic component binding is enabled, JDeveloper adds to the backing bean file a bean property and accessor methods for each UI component on the JSF page. For example:

private HtmlInputText inputText1;
public void setInputText1(HtmlInputText inputText1) {
  this.inputText1 = inputText1;
}
public HtmlInputText getInputText1() {
 return inputText1;
}

Note: JDeveloper does not create managed properties for any of the properties on the backing bean. Managed properties are any properties of the bean that you would like populated with a value when the bean is instantiated. If you wish the bean to be instantiated with certain property values, you must add the managed properties configuration entries in the faces-config.xml file manually.

When automatic component binding is enabled, in the JSF page JDeveloper uses the binding attribute on a component to bind the component instance to the bean property. For example:

<h:inputText binding="#{backing_start.inputText1}" id="inputText1"/>

where backing_start is the symbolic bean name.

In the source code for a page that uses automatic component binding, JDeveloper also inserts an auto binding comment line at the bottom of the page. For example:



In the editor window, click the Start.jsf tab to bring the visual editor forward, then double-click the command button on the page.
In the Bind Action Property dialog, ensure that backing_start is shown in the Managed Bean dropdown list. You should also see commandButton1_action populated in the Method dropdown box. Click OK.
In the source editor for StartInfo.java, enter code to retrieve the value entered in the input text field and display the value in the output text field.

For example, after the comment line in the generated code:

// Add event code here...

Insert the following code shown in bold:

// Add event code here...
outputText1.setValue("Hello "+inputText1.getValue());
return null;

In the Application Navigator, right-click Start.jsf, and choose Run.

If the Create Default Domain dialog displays, enter the default password, for example weblogic1, in the Password and Confirm Password fields, then click OK.

The page in the browser should look similar to this:

When you complete the tutorial, the Application Navigator should look similar to this: