Question

I’ve developed a web application using MyFaces 1.2.6 and Richfaces 3.3.1GA (just upgrated).
Despite the ease of use, I found out that Richfaces components are very slow.

I also found out that they didn’t really take advantage of the browser caching mechanism, they keep sending some lousy JS file every request and other things.
I really would like to apply some rules described in the “High PErformance WEbsites” book, but I can’t change de generated js and HTML code.

Does anyone have some tips for frontend performance tuning using Richfaces?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Have a read of this article.

Are you using Firebug + YSlow to check what is being stored in the cache? Using the web.xml org.richfaces.LoadScriptStrategy setting, you can tell Richfaces to either:

• Load all script in one file.
• Load no scripts (you do it yourself instead – eg. in the manner prescribed by your book).
• Load scripts when needed (the default).

But some basic principles :

• Never put logic into your getters.
  They are called multiple times and
  should only return something already
  populated by another method. For
  example if you are chaining
  drop-downs together use an
  a4j:support tag on the first one
  with an action attribute that loads
  the data which is then retrieved when
  you reRender the second one.

• Use the ajaxSingle="true" unless
  you actually want to send the whole
  form back to the server.

• Don’t use a rich component if you
  only need a normal one. For example
  don’t use rich:dataTable unless you
  are making use of some of the
  features that it has over and above
  h:dataTable.