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Asked: 2026-06-07T08:53:10+00:00

I can’t get facelets file to load into a template. I have a content

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I can’t get facelets file to load into a template.

I have a content facelet called frontpage.xhtml that is set as the welcome page in web.xml. This loads the template. The template then is to include a number of other files. When they wouldn’t load I pared it down to one (header.xhtml) to try to troubleshoot. It wouldn’t even load when I put the header xhtml file in the same directory as the template and frontpage file.

When the app is run the frontpage.xhtml is run inside the template. I can see this because I can see the effects of the css loaded in the template. And I can see the “Hello World” in the title bar and “Hello World!” displayed in the page. But the header is not loaded at the top.

I tried removing all div and class info from the template body as well. There are none in the facelets. It didn’t help.

Can someone provide some insight here? Maybe I’m off base, but I thought I could define the template this way so that I could call different facelets that load into the template’s content area.

This app does run correctly without the templating. i.e. when everything is lumped into one page, which I am trying get away from for modularity.

Directory Structure (starting at the root for web pages)

/frontpage.xhtml
/soulard_base_template.xhtml
/sections/base/header.xhtml

web.xml (what I think are the relevant sections)

<context-param>
    <param-name>javax.faces.PROJECT_STAGE</param-name>
    <param-value>Development</param-value>
</context-param>
<servlet>
    <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet</servlet-class>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/faces/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<welcome-file-list>
    <!--<welcome-file>faces/welcome.xhtml</welcome-file>-->
    <welcome-file>faces/frontpage.xhtml</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>

frontpage.xhtml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets">
  <body>
    <ui:composition template="soulard_base_template.xhtml">
      <ui:define name="windowTitle">
        Hello World
      </ui:define>
      <ui:define name="content">
        <h2>Hello World!</h2> 
      </ui:define>
    </ui:composition>
  </body>
</html>

soulard_base_template.xhtml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
      xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
      xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
      xmlns:p="http://primefaces.org/ui">

  <h:head>
    <title><ui:insert name="windowTitle" /></title>
    <link href="${facesContext.externalContext.requestContextPath}/css/print.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" />
    <link href="${facesContext.externalContext.requestContextPath}/css/screen.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />
    <!--[if lt IE 8]>
    <link href="${facesContext.externalContext.requestContextPath}/css/ie.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />
    <![endif]-->
    <link href="${facesContext.externalContext.requestContextPath}/css/soulardtheme.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />
    <link href="${facesContext.externalContext.requestContextPath}/css/soulard_base.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />

  </h:head>
  <h:body>
    <div class="container showgrid" title="Container">
      <div class="span-24" title="Banner">
        <ui:insert name="header">
          <ui:include src="sections/base/header.xhtml"/>
        </ui:insert>
      </div><!-- End of Banner -->

      <div class="span-16" title="Content Column">
        <ui:insert name="content" />
      </div><!-- End of Centre Column -->
    </div><!-- End of Container -->
  </h:body>

</html>

header.xhtml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
      xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html">
  <body>
    <ui:composition>
      <ui:define name="header">
        <h2>Header</h2>
        <h:graphicImage url="/images/header.png" 
                        width="950"
                        height="175"/>
      </ui:define>
    </ui:composition>
  </body>
</html>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The problem is the additional “define” entry in header.xhtml <ui:define name="header">. You use ui:define usually to replace some content from a template, but note the outer <ui:composition> does not have a reference to a template. So, if there is no template, facelets doesn’t know where to apply it, and finally the inner content is never used.

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