Question

I have created facelet template:

left-right.xhtml

<ui:composition>
    <ui:include name="left" />
    <hr />
    <ui:include name="right" />
</ui:composition>

After, if I use this template with ui:decorate it works fine:

index.xhtml

<ui:decorate template="left-right.xhtml">
    <ui:define name="left">FOO</ui:define>
    <ui:define name="right">BAR</ui:define>
</ui:decorate>

BUT, if I use this template as custom facelet tag it does not works.

custom-taglib.xml

<facelet-taglib>
    <tag>
        <tag-name>leftright</tag-name>
        <source>left-right.xhtml</source>
    </tag>
</facelet-taglib>

index.xhtml

<custom:leftright>
    <ui:define name="left">FOO</ui:define>
    <ui:define name="right">BAR</ui:define>
</custom:leftright>

The content inside ui:define tags is not included into template 🙁

So, question is how can I parameterise facelet template if it renders as facelet custom tag?

Answer 1

(note that you have a syntax error in your left-right.xhtml, you should be using <ui:insert> instead of <ui:include>, but I’ll assume it to be just careless oversimplification)

A tag file cannot be treated as a template client. You need to approach it differently depending on the concrete functional requirement. If you’re on JSF 2.x, then a composite component would be the closest which you need. You could define the parts as <f:facet> and render them by <cc:renderFacet> in the composite implementation.

E.g.

/resources/custom/leftRight.xhtml

<cc:interface>
    <cc:facet name="left" required="true" />
    <cc:facet name="right" required="true" />
</cc:interface>
<cc:implementation>
    <cc:renderFacet name="left" />
    <hr />
    <cc:renderFacet name="right" />
</cc:implementation>

Usage:

<custom:leftRight>
    <f:facet name="left">FOO</f:facet>
    <f:facet name="right">FOO</f:facet>
</custom:leftRight>

But if you’re still on JSF 1.x, you cannot create a composite component. You’d need to stick to <ui:decorate>.

See also:

• When to use <ui:include>, tag files, composite components and/or custom components?