Question

i´m trying to setup a JSF application with Spring Web Flow.

I´m using Spring 3.1
Spring faces 2.3.1
JSF (api,impl) 2.1.6

My problem is the following that the program is not taking the correct
location of my jsf views.

I have found some tutorials like

or http://dgparsons.org/jsf-and-spring-webflow.html
for integrating jsf and spring web flow.

In one of these view resolving is done with:

<bean id="faceletsViewResolver"  class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.faces.mvc.JsfView"/>
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views" />
<property name="suffix" value=".xhtml" />
</bean>

And so I put my xhtml files in the folder /WEB-INF/views/

My Flow is in the directory /WEB-INF/config/flow/start.flow

When I gave it a try the program always wants to open the start.xhtml
from the folder /WEB-INF/config/flow/start.xhtml

So it seems it is completly ignoring the UrlBasedViewResolver.

My FlowBuilderServices is configured as following:

<beans:bean id="flowBuilderServices"
    class="org.springframework.webflow.engine.builder.support.FlowBuilderServices">
...
<beans:property name="viewFactoryCreator"> 
       <beans:bean
         class="org.springframework.faces.webflow.JsfViewFactoryCreator" /> 
     </beans:property>

...
 </beans:bean>

In the tutorials there is no JsfViewFactoryCreator and I cant find a tutorial about it.

As from the javadoc JsfViewFactoryCreator/JsfViewFactory is responsible for the RESTORE_VIEW phase.
So I dived into the source code of the getView() Method of the JsfViewFactory.

JsfViewFactory.java

In line 105

UIViewRoot viewRoot = viewHandler.restoreView(facesContext, viewName);

a FlowViewHandler is called, which generates the wrong path relative to the path of my flow files.

resourcePath = resolveResourcePath(RequestContextHolder.getRequestContext(), viewId);

So my question is now. How can I associate the UrlBasedViewResolver correctly with the flowRegistry/flowbuilderservices so that it takes /WEB-INF/views/*.xthml as my path to the xhtml files.

Or if it is maybe old fashioned to use UrlBasedViewResolver (as I didnt see it in the spring web flow documentation for jsf) how can the webflow beans be configured correctly to use the directories i defined.

For completeness here is my webflow-config.xml file

<!-- Executes flows: the central entry point into the Spring Web Flow system -->
  <flow-executor id="flowExecutor">
    <flow-execution-listeners>
      <listener ref="facesContextListener" />
      <listener ref="securityListener" />
    </flow-execution-listeners>
  </flow-executor>

  <!-- The registry of executable flow definitions -->
  <flow-registry id="flowRegistry" flow-builder-services="flowBuilderServices"
    base-path="/WEB-INF/config/flow">
    <flow-location-pattern value="/*.xml" />
  </flow-registry>

  <beans:bean id="flowBuilderServices"
    class="org.springframework.webflow.engine.builder.support.FlowBuilderServices">
    <beans:property name="expressionParser">
      <beans:bean
        class="org.springframework.webflow.expression.el.WebFlowELExpressionParser">
        <beans:constructor-arg>
          <beans:bean class="com.sun.el.ExpressionFactoryImpl" />
        </beans:constructor-arg>
      </beans:bean>
    </beans:property>
    <beans:property name="viewFactoryCreator"> 
       <beans:bean
         class="org.springframework.faces.webflow.JsfViewFactoryCreator" /> 
     </beans:property>
    <beans:property name="conversionService">
      <beans:bean
        class="org.springframework.binding.convert.service.DefaultConversionService">
      </beans:bean>
    </beans:property>
  </beans:bean>

Answer 1

So finally I found the way to it myself and it was quite simple.

As written in the documentation of spring webflow under – Specifying view identifiers
Spring Webflow Documentation

the solution is to use an absolute view identifier in the flow definition:

<view-state id="enterBookingDetails" view="/WEB-INF/hotels/booking/bookingDetails.xhtml">

Thus there is no need for a URLBasedViewResolver or a special configuration of JSFViewFactoryCreator.