Maxa Blog

JBoss Tools team released JBoss Tools version 3.1 this week. It’s the best IDE for doing enterprise Java development with JSF, RichFaces, Seam, JPA, Hibernate more. You now get JSF2 as well as CDI support. You may or may not have known but over 50% of code in JBoss Tools is being written by Exadel team. I want to thank them for doing an amazing job! It’s an excellent set of tools that really makes enterprise Java development much easier.

Virgil Dodson from Actuate posted a great tutorial on how to use BIRT and Actuate with JSF. RichFaces is used as well. The tutorial uses jsf4birt library developed by Exadel.

jsf4birt can be downloaded here.

Add BIRT Reporting to JSF Applications using RichFaces recording is available here. You can also download the complete application I showed during the webinar here.

RichFaces team has been working hard and this week they released RichFaces version 3.3.3 RC1 which works with JSF 2. This version doesn’t support the full JSF 2 API. This version was made available for two reasons: 1) make 3.3.x branch very stable, 2) make it easier for companies to migrate to JSF 2. You don’t need to wait for RichFaces 4 which will have full JSF 2 support. If you are migrating to an application server which has JSF 2, you can take your existing RichFaces application and run it there.

Make sure to read this post by Jay and this wiki page on how to setup and limitations. One cool feature you can use from JSF 2 is managed beans annotations, but do read the wiki page before starting.

If you are going to be using JSF 1.2 for a while and just need a very stable RichFaces release, then just download version 3.3.3 and use it in exactly the same way.

I’m pretty sure work will now accelerate on RichFaces 4 (get alpha version here) which will fully support JSF 2.

JavaFX is a new scripting language from Sun (I guess now from Oracle) for building Java-based rich user interfaces for the Web, mobile, desktop and even TV. There are plenty of sources on the Internet the predicted or predict the death of JavaFX. Based on what Oracle said few weeks ago, JavaFX has a bright future. We, at Exadel, after playing with JavaFX for some time (see Flamingo, JavaFX Eclipse plug-in) believe that JavaFX is actually a great language to build rich user interfaces, and not only for Java-based applications. JavaFX script can be extended to be used as a view description language (VDL) for JSF or even HTML5.

What does it mean? Well, you no longer have to mix HTML with JSF tags. The entire page is developed from JavaFX nodes (UI components), using JavaFX’s object-oriented nature. Layout it defined via JavaFX layout controls. It will be now be possible (finally) to create real visual and drag-and-drop editor for JSF.

Another very powerful feature in JavaFX is binding. Any changes in the model are automatically updated in the UI, it’s possible to extend the same to JSF. No longer you have to specify what components to render via Ajax, it will be done automatically by the application. More about this feature from Alex Smirnov’s blog.

We already have a first version of JavaFX as JSF VDL (we are still looking for better name, any suggestions?), and here is a quick example. When a button is clicked, the label Hello X is updated with the number of clicks.

var x = 0;
var bindVal = "Hello";
 
function init(){
   FxPage{
      content : [
         FxForm{
                content : [
                    FxOutputLabel{
                        value : bind bindVal
                    },
                    FxCommandButton{
                        value : "Button"
                        actionListener : function() : String{
                            bindVal = "Hello {x++}";
			    return null;
                        }
                    }
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
}

JavaFX script above is processed and a standard JSF UI component tree is created as with Facelets.

For now the model is created inside the JavaFX file, but we are working on allowing to bind to JSF managed beans or CDI beans.

As you can see JavaFX is a very powerful UI language. We will make this library available soon. It works with JSF 2.

You can read more about JavaFX as JSF VDL for Alex Smirnov’s blog.

Several members of the RichFaces and JBoss Tools teams will be presenting at the Modern Java Technologies Workshop in Minsk, Belarus. From the RichFaces team Nick Belaevski and Ilya Shaikovsky will be discussing Java Server Faces 2.0, and then two topics on RichFaces 3.3.X and 4.0.X.

More information (more information in Russian).

To register, send an email to conference@exadel.com

Today I got a copy of JSF 1.2 Components book (PACKT Publishing) by Ian Hlavats. I’m going to read and write a review for the book on my blog. The book covers various JSF components including RichFaces, MyFaces, IceFaces, Seam, and standard JSF. Read more about the book here.

You can also download a free Facelets Components chapter.

I attended David Geary’s talk on Killer Web Apps with JSF 2 Ajax at JSF Summit where he demonstrated Ajax features in JSF 2. As you start with JSF 2, you will notice that many Ajax features in JSF 2 are very similar to what RichFaces has been providing for a number of years now.

RichFaces 4 will be based on JSF 2 and will provide some interesting advanced features on top of standard JSF 2 Ajax. Some features are advanced queues, advanced rendering features and tags such as a4j:poll, a4j:status and more. Here is a blog entry that demonstrates Ajax features in RichFaces 3.3.x, JSF 2 and RichFaces 4.

JSF Summit 2009 is starts tomorrow in Orlando, Florida. I’m doing a session on Ajax Applications with RichFaces and JSF2 on Wednesday, at 11:00am. Stop by and say hello.

If you are still interested to attend the conference, I can get you a 50% discount of the registration price.

As reported here, Nick Belaevski is the newest member to join JSF 2 Expert Group from Exadel. Nick is Exadel’s lead developer for RichFaces project. On the Exadel side, Nick joins Alexander Smirnov who has been a member for a long time.

Congratulations, Nick!