Question

I have used spring MVC with JSP/JSTL for my previous application. I was going through JSF for my next project. But now I’m wondering how do I manage this all with many navigation rules. Won’t the application become tightly coupled? How do I use it for a large project.

Answer 1

Just make use of implicit navigation. If you make your navigation case outcome the same as the to-view-id, then you don’t need to define a <navigation-case> at all.

For simple page-to-page navigation, use <h:link> or <h:button>.

<h:link value="Go to page2" outcome="page2" />

The link’s URL will implicitly resolve to the right URL for page2.xhtml.

For navigation on form submits as performed by <h:commandLink> and <h:commandButton>, return the proper outcome in action method.

public String submit() {
     // ...

     return "page2";
}

Note that using POST for plain page-to-page navigation is bad design as this is user and SEO unfriendly.

See also:

• Communication in JSF 2.0 – Implicit navigation
• When should I use h:outputLink instead of h:commandLink?