Question

I found examples of programmatic login into jsf based application, like this from Balusc.
Maybe it is silly question but, when I use form based authentication, I can use only a simple html form with

<input id="username" type="text" name="j_username" />
<input id="password" type="password" name="j_password"/> 

in <form method="post" action="j_security_check"> form.

I cannot use jsf form from example, why?

Answer 1

Because it’s not JSF who handles the login, it’s the container itself. The JSF <h:form> does not allow you to specify a specific action URL. So you have to use <form>.

But your question title is confusing. Using a j_security_check form is not “programmatic login”. It’s “container managed login”. The real programmatic login way is calling HttpServletRequest#login() yourself. You can do this in a JSF managed bean action method which is invoked by a JSF <h:form>.