Practical JSF in Java EE 8

Michael Müller

Practical JSF in Java EE 8

Web Applications in Java for the

Enterprise

Michael Müller

Brühl, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced

by the author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via

the book's product page, located at

www.apress.com/9781484230299 . For more detailed

information, please visit www.apress.com/source-code .

ISBN 978-1-48423029-9

e-ISBN 978-1-4842-3030-5

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3030-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941459

© Michael Müller 2018

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Finance Inc). SSBM Finance Inc is a Delaware corporation.

To my wife Claudia and my kids:

Thank you for your patience during night-writing and

other long sessions.

I love you.

Preface

Developing web applications with Java and JavaServer Faces

(JSF) had been a great pleasure (and success) to me for a

couple of years when I realized first wanted to write a book

about JSF in late 2010. I got in touch with some German

publishers with the goal of writing around 200–250 pages

about this subject, nothing more. “No thanks, too special” was

one answer. The other: “Great. Add some more pages, another

thousand, and write about the whole Java Enterprise Edition.

Keep JSF smaller than 200 pages.” Frustrating answers.

So, I started to blog about JSF in early 2011. And I became

a member of the JSF 2.2 (JSR 344) Expert Group. Unlike most

of the other volunteers, I wasn’t a JSF implementer, but an

expert JSF user. I became a member of the JSF 2.3 (JSR 372)

Expert Group too. I’m still an expert JSF user, but I started to

code a bit within the JSF sources. If I’m accepted as an expert

group member for JSF’s next version, whatever it may be

called after the transition to the Eclipse Foundation, I want to

contribute code.

My tutorial on web development with JSF is still the most

popular part of my blog ( blog.mueller-bruehl.de ),

and I never gave up my intention to write a book about this

subject. Over time, I switched from blogging in German to

writing about development in mostly English. And that

German publisher would be happy to learn that I now write

about related Java EE stuff also.

With the articles of my blog as a solid foundation, I started

to write my book, Web Development with Java and JSF ,

which I first published myself in 2014 using Leanpub (

www.leanpub.com/jsf ). It became a kind of living

book. The first version only covered the fundamentals. Every

reader who purchased it was able to download later updates.

Thus, the book grew up.

In 2016 Apress first asked me to publish the book as is. I

declined, because I wanted to add more stuff. When they

asked me again in 2017, the book had reached such a stage

that I agreed. Of course, there is still more to write about, but

for every book you need to make a final decision on content.

Today, you hold in your hands an enhanced edition of my

former book. It follows the same approach, combining

theoretical background with practical development. The title

Practical JSF in Java EE 8 is a clue that it’s not only about

JSF — you can’t use this UI technology in isolation. Rather,

it’s embedded in a full stack of technologies we know as the

Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE). Java EE 8 was released on

September 21, 2017, and Oracle has begun its donation of Java

EE to the Eclipse Foundation. Even if future versions will be

called Jakarta EE, the latest version still is Java EE 8 with JSF

2.3. Because this book is about practical development, it

concentrates on applications, not on the latest features.

Although all applications in this book operate with Java EE 8,

most of the apps might be realized with Java EE 7, which is

still state-of-the-art in most enterprise environments. Only

those functions that rely on newer Java EE features need the

appropriate version — the last application described in this

book, Alumni, takes advantage of such new features.

In a sense, this book teaches you to develop Java EE

applications with JSF as user interface. It’s a book for Java

enthusiasts. Knowledge about web technologies is helpful, but

not required. For developers who aren’t familiar with HTML,

CSS, and other stuff, I’ve added some introductory chapters in

the appendixes.

Enjoy!

—Michael Müller

Acknowledgments

All content unless otherwise mentioned is written by me. But a

couple of people provided me feedback, helped with wording,

or did a technical review on TinyCalculator and/or Books.

Besides the people who are mentioned below, a special thank

you to John Wright, who also provided a couple of comments.

And a special thank you to all the other people who provided a

mostly one-time feedback. All of you helped to improve this

book.

Pratap Chatterjee is a software engineer who has worked

with enterprise application software development for over 20

years, mainly in the telecommunication industry in England

with BT and T-Mobile UK as programmer, designer,

developer, and team leader with Java and web technologies.

Currently Pratap lives in Sweden with his wife and two sons.

He’s working for Karolinska Institutet, one of the world’s

leading medical universities. Pratap enjoys programming, and

in his role as a programmer developer, he has written

applications that help in the publication of doctoral courses

and admission of students by the university. Pratap has also

reviewed technical articles and recently reviewed Grails in

Action , 2nd Edition (Manning, 2014), by Glen Smith and

Peter Ledbrook.

Constantin Marian Alin is a passionate Java developer

focused on developing web/desktop applications using the

latest Java technologies. Beside daily work and learning, in the

past few years he has written and published articles for the

Developer.com and DZone communities. Currently, he’s

focused on developing RIA/SPA applications for the GIS field

by integrating the power of Java frameworks like JavaServer

Faces, PrimeFaces, AngularJS, Bootstrap, RESTful, EJB, JPA,

and more with the GIS specialized software, such as ArcGIS,

OpenLayers, GeoServer, Google Maps, and others.

Anghel Leonard is a senior Java developer with more

than 13 years of experience in Java SE, Java EE, and related

frameworks. He’s written and published more than 50 articles

about Java technologies and more than 500 tips and tricks for

many websites dedicated to programming. In addition, he’s

written books including Pro Java 7 NIO.2 (Apress), Pro

Hibernate and MongoDB (Apress), Tehnologii XML XML în

Java (Albastra), Jboss Tools 3 Developer’s Guide (Packt

Publishing), JSF 2.0 Cookbook (Packt), JSF 2.0 Cookbook:

LITE (Packt), Mastering JavaServer Faces 2.2 (Packt).

Currently, Anghel is developing web applications using

the latest Java technologies on the market (EJB 3.0, CDI,

Spring, JSF, Struts, Hibernate, and so on). For the past two

years, he’s focused on developing rich Internet applications for

geographic information systems.

Special thanks to the reviewers of this edition, Manual

Jordan Elera and Mathew Moodie , who provided input to

refine and enhance this book.

Table of Contents

1. Part I: TinyCalculator

1.

1. Chapter 1: TinyCalculator

1. Creating the Application

2. Working with TinyCalculator

1. Managed Beans

2. The Page

3. The Relationship Between Code and View

3. Summary

2. Chapter 2: Foundations

1. Web Applications

2. HTTP

3. HTML

4. CSS

5. JavaScript

6. Java

7. Maven

8. Selenium and Arquillian

9. Servlet

10. Deployment

11. Summary

3. Chapter 3: JavaServer Faces

1. View Definition Language

2. Web vs. Traditional Application

3. JSF Lifecycle Overview

4. JSF Namespaces and Tags

5. Component Tree

6. Navigation

7. Summary

4. Chapter 4: Expression Language

1. Unified Expression Language

2. Value Expression

1. Operators

2. Dot and Square Bracket

3. Method Expression

4. Implicit Objects

5. Summary

5. Chapter 5: HTML-Friendly Markup

1. HTML-Friendly TinyCalculator

2. Summary

6. Chapter 6: Configuration Files

1. pom.xml

2. web.xml

3. faces-config.xml

4. beans.xml

5. persistence.xml

6. glassfish-resources.xml

7. glassfish-web.xml

8. Other Files

9. Summary

7. Chapter 7: Testing with Selenium

1. Selenium Overview

2. Preparing TinyCalculator

3. Creating the Test

4. Unit Test without Selenium

5. Summary

8. Chapter 8: TinyCalculator Recap

2. Part II: Books

1.

1. Chapter 9: Preparing for Java EE 8

1. Current Evolution

2. Upgrade the Application Server

3. Payara Server

4. Summary

2. Chapter 10: Introducing the Books Application

1. Books Requirements

2. Development Order

3. Summary

3. Chapter 11: Starting the Books App

1. Page Layout

1. HTML Structure

2. Basic Styling with CSS

2. Design First Data Model

3. First Dialog Box (Repeating Structure)

4. Summary

4. Chapter 12: Java Persistence API

1. Entities

2. Persistence Unit

1. Data Source

2. Entity Manager

3. Service Class