Overview of JSF

Java Server Faces (JSF) is a popular framework used to develop User Interfaces (UI) for server-based applications (it is also known as JSR 127 and is a part of J2EE 1.5). It contains a set of UI components totally managed through JSF support, like handling events, validation, navigation rules, internationalization, accessibility, customizability, and so on. In addition, it contains a tag library for expressing UI components within a JSP page. Among JSF features, we mention the ones that JSF provides:

Speaking of JSF life cycle, you should know that every JSF request that renders a JSP involves a JSF component tree, also called a view. Each request is made up of phases. By standard, we have the following phases (shown in the following figure):

We end this overview with a few bullets regarding JSF UI components:

Note that these are the theoretical aspects of the JSF framework meant to get you familiar with the model and components of the JSF engine. For practical examples and a complete tutorial, you can access resources like http://java.sun.com/javaee/javaserverfaces/reference/docs/.

If you have never worked with JSF or have less experience in doing so, then it is absolutely mandatory to access a more detailed documentation before going further.