Integrating Basic JSF Components Into Portals
On one hand, the JSF specification supports the Portlet deployment use-case via an abstract API, which allows going beyond Servlets, but its reference implementation cannot be executed, as is in a JSR 168 Portlet environment. In this context, the JSF Portlet bridge reference implementation, or the bridge corresponding to your particular JSF implementation, is needed, along with the default JSF reference implementation.
Even though a JSF Portlet is packaged almost as a regular JSF application, some differences exist. The additional steps needed to create a Portlet with JSF technology are the following:
- Copy jsf-portlet.jar Portlet bridge into the WEB-INF/lib directory of your JSF application.
- Add a new portlet.xml Portlet deployment descriptor in the WEB-INF directory of the application.
Below is a typical portlet.xml deployment descriptor, where the INIT_VIEW parameter is replaced to refer to your JSP page.
<portlet-app […]> <portlet> <description>JSF Portlet</description> <portlet-name>jsfPortlet </portlet-name> <display-name>JSF Portlet</display-name> <portlet-class>com.sun.faces.portlet.FacesPortlet</portlet-class> <init-param> <description>Portlet init view page</description> <name>com.sun.faces.portlet.INIT_VIEW</name> <value>/index.jsp</value> </init-param> <supports> <mime-type>text/html</mime-type> <portlet-mode>VIEW</portlet-mode> </supports> <portlet-info> <title>JSF Portlet</title> <short-title>jsfPortlet</short-title> </portlet-info> </portlet> </portlet-app> - Avoid any <html>, <head>, <body> or any other forbidden tags as per the JSR 168 specifications in your JSF/JSP pages of your Portlet. Remember that the resulting pages will later be included in the portal HTML page.
- Use only JSF tags in
<f:view> <p:portletPage> <h:form> <h:anyComponent/> </h:form> </p:portletPage> </f:view>- Deploy the resulting Portlet WAR file as specified by your chosen portal environment.
With these five steps, you can deploy your JSF components in a JSR 168 portal. But if you want to go beyond the JSF default implementation for components with Ajax behaviors, you will need to go through additional steps.
