I really want to use JSF 2.2 but with Spring as I want to use Tomcat as the application server. However based on documentation #ManagedBean is deprecated and CDI is the way to go with JSF 2.2+. Thus I was asking if this combination {Spring+CDI for backend and JSF 2.2 frontend} all running on Tomcat will work without glitches?
Related
In lieu of JSF 2.3+ greater coupling with CDI, will Spring integrate with JSF 2.3, and if so any timeline on this?
It appears there are still issue with JSF 2.2 ViewScope.
I am currently implementing a small Spring MVC PoC, and I would like to use JSF as the view technology since most people in my company are used to a J2EE with Primefaces environment.
Does Spring MVC 3 support JSF, or simply JSP? I have read multiple articles mixing the two.
My need is to create an appealing UI. Is there a simple way to do this using Spring MVC with the JSP as the view technology?
Our application uses schedules/calendars in multiples pages. It's basically a time management APP
You're making a conceptual mistake. JSF is not a view technology. JSF is a MVC framework. Exactly like as Spring MVC, albeit they have both a different ideology; JSF is component based MVC and Spring MVC is request based MVC. Thus they are full competitors. You cannot mix them. You should choose the one or the other. Instead, JSP and Facelets are true view technologies. Since Java EE 6 (December 2009), JSP is deprecated and replaced by Facelets (XHTML) as default view technology for JSF.
You can use Spring MVC with JSP view technology. You can also use Spring MVC with Facelets view technology (and many others). But you can not use Spring MVC with JSF components let alone with JSF component libraries like PrimeFaces. JSF output components may work, but JSF input components won't work at all. Spring MVC has already its own <form:xxx> tags for input. Even if you mix them, you will end up with half of the functionality from both frameworks in a mingled and confusing code base. This is not making any sense. If all you want is to use the same UI as PrimeFaces, just grab jQuery UI. It's also exactly what PrimeFaces is using under the covers. PrimeFaces is a jQuery-based JSF component library.
From the other side on, it can also be very good that you confused Spring IoC/DI with Spring MVC. Spring IoC/DI is in turn usable together with JSF. You can replace the JSF managed bean facility (#ManagedBean and friends) by Spring managed bean facility (#Component and friends), usually with the sole purpose in order to use #Autowired in a JSF backing bean. But that's it. The JSF MVC framework lifecycle, the JSF components and the view technology remain unchanged. The standard Java EE equivalent of that would be using CDI (and EJB).
The same story applies to Spring Security. You can use it together with JSF, you should however not follow Spring Security + Spring MVC targeted documentation/examples in order to configure it, but only Spring Security + JSF ones. Do note that Spring Security constraints on business actions only works when you replace the JSF managed bean facility by Spring managed bean facility. So that would still require a "Integrate Spring in JSF" as described in previous paragraph. The standard Java EE equivalent of this all would be using container managed security (JAAS/JASPIC) via <security-constraint> entries in web.xml.
The same story also applies to Spring WebFlow. You only also need to make sure that you're using most recent version of Spring WebFlow as older versions cause conflicts when used together with multiple JSF component libraries. Moreover, since JSF 2.2, new Faces Flows feature was introduced as part of standard Java EE API, hereby basically making Spring WebFlow superfluous.
Then there is Spring Boot. This does not have a direct equivalent in Java EE. Spring Boot basically enables you to execute a Java EE application using a plain Java application class with a main() method "in an easy and abstract way". Without Spring Boot it's surely possible (otherwise Spring Boot would never have existed), it's only a bit more work as to configuration as you have to take into account server-specific details based on its documentation. For example: Undertow and Jetty.
Coming back to JSF and Spring MVC, if really necessary, you can safely run Spring MVC and JSF next to each other in same web application, but they won't interoperate in server side. They will run completely independently. They will at most touch each other in the client side, if some JavaScript in a JSF-generated HTML page happens to invoke a Spring based REST web service call in the same web application. But that Spring web service would then not need/have to know anything about JSF in order to respond accordingly. The standard Java EE equivalent of that Spring REST webservice is JAX-RS.
The upcoming Java EE 8 will come with a new request based MVC framework, named just "MVC", based on lessons of both JSF and Spring MVC, hereby supplanting Spring MVC and providing a standard alternative to JSF.
See also:
What exactly is Java EE?
Difference between Request MVC and Component MVC
What are the main disadvantages of Java Server Faces 2.0?
What is the need of JSF, when UI can be achieved from CSS, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery?
When is it necessary or convenient to use Spring or EJB3 or all of them together?
Spring JSF integration: how to inject a Spring component/service in JSF managed bean?
Why Facelets is preferred over JSP as the view definition language from JSF2.0 onwards?
Spring MVC and JSF don't really mix. You can use JSF for the view related stuff and have Spring manage and wire the backed (services, daos etc.). But trying to match #Controllers with JSF pages isn't something that really works nicely (next to that both are different stacks request based against component-based).
To integrate Spring with JSF you will need to add the SpringBeanFacesELResolver to your faces-config.xml. That will lookup beans from Springs application context. For this to work you have to use plain JSF annotations and not the CDI based annotations.
Spring Webflow can be a help here. Check out this sample project.
https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-webflow-samples/tree/master/primefaces-showcase
I am currently implementing a small Spring MVC PoC, and I would like to use JSF as the view technology since most people in my company are used to a J2EE with Primefaces environment.
Does Spring MVC 3 support JSF, or simply JSP? I have read multiple articles mixing the two.
My need is to create an appealing UI. Is there a simple way to do this using Spring MVC with the JSP as the view technology?
Our application uses schedules/calendars in multiples pages. It's basically a time management APP
You're making a conceptual mistake. JSF is not a view technology. JSF is a MVC framework. Exactly like as Spring MVC, albeit they have both a different ideology; JSF is component based MVC and Spring MVC is request based MVC. Thus they are full competitors. You cannot mix them. You should choose the one or the other. Instead, JSP and Facelets are true view technologies. Since Java EE 6 (December 2009), JSP is deprecated and replaced by Facelets (XHTML) as default view technology for JSF.
You can use Spring MVC with JSP view technology. You can also use Spring MVC with Facelets view technology (and many others). But you can not use Spring MVC with JSF components let alone with JSF component libraries like PrimeFaces. JSF output components may work, but JSF input components won't work at all. Spring MVC has already its own <form:xxx> tags for input. Even if you mix them, you will end up with half of the functionality from both frameworks in a mingled and confusing code base. This is not making any sense. If all you want is to use the same UI as PrimeFaces, just grab jQuery UI. It's also exactly what PrimeFaces is using under the covers. PrimeFaces is a jQuery-based JSF component library.
From the other side on, it can also be very good that you confused Spring IoC/DI with Spring MVC. Spring IoC/DI is in turn usable together with JSF. You can replace the JSF managed bean facility (#ManagedBean and friends) by Spring managed bean facility (#Component and friends), usually with the sole purpose in order to use #Autowired in a JSF backing bean. But that's it. The JSF MVC framework lifecycle, the JSF components and the view technology remain unchanged. The standard Java EE equivalent of that would be using CDI (and EJB).
The same story applies to Spring Security. You can use it together with JSF, you should however not follow Spring Security + Spring MVC targeted documentation/examples in order to configure it, but only Spring Security + JSF ones. Do note that Spring Security constraints on business actions only works when you replace the JSF managed bean facility by Spring managed bean facility. So that would still require a "Integrate Spring in JSF" as described in previous paragraph. The standard Java EE equivalent of this all would be using container managed security (JAAS/JASPIC) via <security-constraint> entries in web.xml.
The same story also applies to Spring WebFlow. You only also need to make sure that you're using most recent version of Spring WebFlow as older versions cause conflicts when used together with multiple JSF component libraries. Moreover, since JSF 2.2, new Faces Flows feature was introduced as part of standard Java EE API, hereby basically making Spring WebFlow superfluous.
Then there is Spring Boot. This does not have a direct equivalent in Java EE. Spring Boot basically enables you to execute a Java EE application using a plain Java application class with a main() method "in an easy and abstract way". Without Spring Boot it's surely possible (otherwise Spring Boot would never have existed), it's only a bit more work as to configuration as you have to take into account server-specific details based on its documentation. For example: Undertow and Jetty.
Coming back to JSF and Spring MVC, if really necessary, you can safely run Spring MVC and JSF next to each other in same web application, but they won't interoperate in server side. They will run completely independently. They will at most touch each other in the client side, if some JavaScript in a JSF-generated HTML page happens to invoke a Spring based REST web service call in the same web application. But that Spring web service would then not need/have to know anything about JSF in order to respond accordingly. The standard Java EE equivalent of that Spring REST webservice is JAX-RS.
The upcoming Java EE 8 will come with a new request based MVC framework, named just "MVC", based on lessons of both JSF and Spring MVC, hereby supplanting Spring MVC and providing a standard alternative to JSF.
See also:
What exactly is Java EE?
Difference between Request MVC and Component MVC
What are the main disadvantages of Java Server Faces 2.0?
What is the need of JSF, when UI can be achieved from CSS, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery?
When is it necessary or convenient to use Spring or EJB3 or all of them together?
Spring JSF integration: how to inject a Spring component/service in JSF managed bean?
Why Facelets is preferred over JSP as the view definition language from JSF2.0 onwards?
Spring MVC and JSF don't really mix. You can use JSF for the view related stuff and have Spring manage and wire the backed (services, daos etc.). But trying to match #Controllers with JSF pages isn't something that really works nicely (next to that both are different stacks request based against component-based).
To integrate Spring with JSF you will need to add the SpringBeanFacesELResolver to your faces-config.xml. That will lookup beans from Springs application context. For this to work you have to use plain JSF annotations and not the CDI based annotations.
Spring Webflow can be a help here. Check out this sample project.
https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-webflow-samples/tree/master/primefaces-showcase
This text is from the book called Core Java Server Faces:
It is a historical accident that there are two separate mechanisms,
CDI beans and JSF managed beans, for beans that can be used in JSF
pages. We suggest that you use CDI beans unless your application must
work on a plain servlet runner such as Tomcat. The source code for the
book comes in two versions, one with CDI beans (for Java EE 6
application servers) and one with JSF managed beans (for servlet
runners without CDI support).
My question is:
If I use the Spring Framework, and a Tomcat Server, will I need to use one of the beans mentioned above, or does Spring Framework come with its own bean implementations?
As far as I know, Spring Framework supports Dependency Injection. Does it support it if I run the application on Tomcat? Does it mean that I will be using neither the CDI beans nor the JSF Managed means mentioned in this book?
Thank you.
talking about container is more correct than bean implementation. Yes Spring comes with its own container. In fact you can see spring frameworks as a kind of alternative to the full Java EE stack.
Using Spring DI and CDI together has about no interest but you still can use JSF with spring on tomcat although if i would advise you to switch to a Java EE 6 web profile server instead of spring in this case.
Spring comes with is own view framework implementation named spring mvc.
All of this can run perfectly on any servlet container (jetty tomcat etc...) on condition that you provide associated dependencies ofc.
I've been developing Spring 3 + JSF 2.0 applications for some time. They run on simple Tomcat or Jetty container. Looking ad CDI I envy a conversation scope.
Are you aware of simple conversation scope implementation for Spring? I don't want to use full-blown SpringMVC + WebFlow + SpringFaces stack. I just need a web filter that enables conversation scope and lets me inject conversation object and start or stop it. Like in CDI.
Not exactly on your question, but since you're asking for a solution in order to avoid using Spring Webflow, Spring Faces, etc ... it looks like you're using Spring just for DI (i mean you're not so dependent on the Spring ecosystem). Well, maybe in this case it would worth the effort to think about migrating to a Java EE 6 stack. I don't think the migration would be that difficult, since you're using not that much from Spring, and in case you have beans in spring you still need, you could write some CDI producers for them. You can google for some migration paths from Spring to Java EE 6.
And if you're afraid of the "heavy Java EE containers", well jboss 7.1, Glassfish 3.1.2 and TomEE all start on my notebook in under 2 seconds, and I bet your tomcat + spring container don't start much faster.
Just my opinion.
you should give a look to Apache TomEE + CODI project (subject of Apache MyFaces) and/or Apache Deltaspike (not sure the doc is up to date because it is pretty young)
TomEE gives you the strength of CDI and CODI adds a small integration layer between cdi and jsf to make it very powerful (it will be integrated in deltaspike but that's still a bit in progress)
MyFaces Orchestra (also works with Mojarra) is currently the best conversation scope implementation for JSF 2.0 on top of Spring.
Use the JSF #ViewScoped annotation on your managed bean that gives you the same conversation-like semantics as the CDI conversation scope. One difference between CDI's conversation scope and JSF's view scope is that CDI gives you explicit and straightforward control over the conversation while the JSF viewscope is pretty much canned for use. But with JSF's ViewScope, you know exactly where the boundaries of a conversation are: A conversation starts when you load a page backed with a #ViewScoped bean and ends when the page is closed. This is convenient for many use cases
Cagatay of primefaces also has this hack to simulate the CDI scope in Spring.
This tutorial by Max Katz from the the Richfaces team also gives a good intro the JSF ViewScope