Question

I’m quite new to using JSF and I’m not sure if that’s the right way to go, but in Rails you usually have a main application file into which the current page is loaded. That way I don’t have to worry about copy-pasting the menu, etc. every time.

How can I achieve that with JSF 2? Can I navigate to the same main page every time and tell it to load a current content? Or do I tell the current page that I navigate to to load the “main frame around the content”?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes of course, JSF 2.0 has page-templating feature. You define a template that defines a generic layout to all the view pages.

Facelets tags to create basic page:

• ui:insert – defines content that is going to replace by the file that load the template;
• ui:define – defines content that is inserted into tag ui:insert;
• ui:include – includes content from another page;
• ui:composition – the specified template is loaded, if used with template attribute, and the children of this tag defines the template layout. In other case, it’s a group of elements, that can be inserted somewhere.

For example:

<ui:composition
     xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
     xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
    template="/templates/myLayout.xhtml">

   <ui:define name="menu">
      <ui:include src="/mypath/menu.xhtml"/>
   </ui:define>

   <ui:define name="content"> 
     <ui:include src="/mypath/content.xhtml"/>           
   </ui:define>

</ui:composition>

or

<ui:insert name="content">
   <ui:include src="/mypath/mycontent.xhtml"/>
</ui:insert>