As a vocal blogger, I feel responsible for promoting and sharing the good work of others, whether that be technology, creative work, or in this case: a book. I will take no exception to that philosophy when it comes to the JavaServer Faces framework. For a quick read, try the summary. If you are intrigued, read on! I hope you find this review valuable.

So, a little while ago I was attempting to use JSF’s Facelets <ui:repeat> tag, as a replacement for <h:dataTable>, but difficulty came when I needed to process actions on individual records of each row. <ui:repeat> allows iteration over a List of Array[] of items, but it does not provide a method of discovering the “selected” or “actioned” row; there’s no way to discover the row the user is interacting with. Or is there?

Are you using PrettyFaces on a project you can share about?

Looking for real-world experiences:

• How has PrettyFaces helped you or your team?
• What would you change if you could (you can)?
• If you would like to share, show us your work of art!

Email to: lincoln@ocpsoft.com Thank you! PS – In addition: If you’d like to be added to our new “People using PrettyFaces” page, also send a logo and a short description of your product or company!

PrettyFaces:

A new version of PrettyFaces for JSF1.1 (historical support) is now available for download. This version is feature-complete, but we are looking for feedback on compatibility and functionality that may be broken with various implementations, so please post comments!

If you are manipulating any FacesContext when doing any kind of Sevlet Forwards – such as from a filter – you MUST release() any FacesContext you’ve created. The consequences of forgetting this are potentially dire.

So you’ve got Spring Security up and running. Great! Now you’ve got a login page, and you just added a form on the global page menu to allow users to Login from any public page. There’s just one problem. When they log-in from a public page, they’re redirected to the default-login-url! Your users will have to re-navigate to the page they were already viewing when they logged in, or maybe they’ll just use the much dreaded “Back” button. That’s not a good interaction, but we have a solution.

PrettyFaces:

New versions of PrettyFaces for JSF1.2 and JSF2.0 are now available for download:

Several things that make life painful with Facelets are fixed with JSF2 & EzComp. Take a look at some of the nicer things to come:

A correction has been made to the post: http://ocpsoft.com/java/acegi-spring-security-jsf-login-page/, fixing an issue where FacesMessages were not being displayed on failed authentications.

PrettyFaces:

Version 1.2.3_GA: binary, source, documentation (stable) Minor Release: 20090415

1. Added optional <action onPostback=”false”> boolean flag to prevent action methods from being called on form postback. Defaults to true;
2. Added optional <query-param decode=”false”> to prevent java.net.URLDecode.decode() from being called on a specific managed query-parameter. Defaults to true;
3. Added unit tests for several critical classes.
4. Minor to moderate refactoring of PrettyFilter/PrettyContext