JSF Components Matrix

Following is JSF Components Comparison Matrix of variours Frameworks like Tomahawk/ICEFaces/RichFaces/Oracle ADF/PrimeFaces.

	Tomahawk	Tobago	Trinidad	ICEfaces	JBoss RichFaces	Oracle ADF	PrimeFaces
Technology	JSF	JSF	JSF	JSF	JSF	JSF	JSF
Homepage	URL	URL	URL	URL	URL	URL	URL
Demo URL	URL	URL	URL	URL	URL	URL	URL
				Enterprise Component URL
Demo WAR	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Document URL	URL	URL	URL	URL	URL	URL	URL
Forum URL			URL	URL	URL	URL	URL
Free	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
License	Apache License	Apache License	Apache License	MPL	GNU LGPL	Commercial	Apache License
Can Integrate with	Ajax4jsf, JBoss RichFaces		Orchestra	Seam, Spring Webflow, (Tomahawk)	Seam, Spring, Tomahawk
JSF 1.2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
JSF 2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Facelets	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Java 6	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Portlet				Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
JQuery		Yes			Yes
Scriptaculous				Yes	Yes
YUI							Yes
Datatable	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tree	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Treetable	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Live Scrolling	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tab	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Menu	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Html Editor/ Rich Text Editor	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Inplace Editor	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	Yes
Calendar	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Chart	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Dual List	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes		Yes
Upload	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Progressbar / ProgressIndicator	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Drag n Drop	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Autocomplete	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Popupdialog	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Modal Dialog	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Spreadsheet
Google Maps				Yes	Yes		Yes
Savescrollstate
Multithreading
Server Pushing				Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tooltip			Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
In-Cell Editing in DataTable		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Column Drag&Drop					Yes	Yes
Column Hiding				Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Column Resizing		Yes		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Column Grouping				Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Row Selection				Yes	Yes		Yes
Filter Table				Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Export to Excel				Yes		Yes	Yes
Database Pagination				Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Drag & Drop Reordering
Expandable Table				Yes		Yes	Yes
Multiple Sorting					Yes
Tab Scrolling					Yes
Tab Closing				Yes	Yes		Yes
Tab Adding				Yes
Tab Context Menu
Skinning / Theme		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes		Yes
Specials Components	Sandbox offers some ajax components		InputNumber Spinbox, SelectMany Shuttle and a process train and client side validation	Editable List, Number/Text Spinner, Date Spinner, Tri-State Checkbox (Unchecked/Partial/ Checked), Rich Tab View, Schedule	Multifile upload, AJAX Queue, Colorchooser, Google Maps, Virtual Earth, Layout	Maps, Graphs, Gantt, Gauges	Bread Crumb, Capatcha, Carousel, Dashboard, Dock, Image Compare, Image Cropper, KeyBoard, LightBox, MaskedInput, Notification Bar, Password Strength Indicator, Schedule, Star Rating, Stack , Water Mark, Wizard
Eclipse Tag Support				Yes	Yes
Eclipse Visual Design				Yes	Yes
Netbeans Tag Support				Yes	Yes
Netbeans Visual Design
IE6	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
IE7	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IE8	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Firefox 2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Firefox 3 +	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Safari				Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

JSF Introduction

JavaServer Faces (JSF) technology, a server-side user-interface component framework for Java-based Web applications. This for those developers who are new to JSF and want to come up to speed quickly — not just with JSF, but with using JSF components to reduce efforts.

If you are doing Java server-side Web development, JSF is the easiest framework to learn. It is geared for creating Web applications. It allows you to focus on your Java code and without handling request objects, session objects, request parameters, or dealing with complicated XML files. With JSF, you can get more things done more quickly than with other Java Web frameworks.


1.1 JSF Features:

1) It's based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC Model-2) concept,
2) Built on top of Servlet API,
3) User Interface(UI) components(Stateful object) are stored on the server,
4) Backing beans - specialized JavaBeans with Getters & Setters method and Event Listener methods,
5) Navigation for navigating from one page to next,
6) Expession Language (JSF EL) used for wiring components to objects that expose JavaBean properties,
7) Validators for validating form,
8) Converters for converting value to and from a String for display,
9) Event driven programming model (Similar to Swing),
10) Events generated by user are handled on the server.
11) Messages for displaying Information or Error messages to the user,
12) Renderers responsible for displaying UI components, etc etc...



1.2 A JSF application

1) A JSF application consists of web pages with JSF UI components (JSP page).
2) Managed Bean(Java class).
– Getters and Setters, Action methods, Action listeners, Value-Change listeners methods.
3) A JSF application requires also some configuration files ("faces-config.xml" and "web.xml").

1.2.1 The faces-config.xml defines:

1) Managed Bean - the data elements of the JSF application (managed beans and backing beans) Represents a Java class which will be created dynamically during runtime of the JSF application. It can be defined for which scope the bean is valid (Session, Request, Application or none).
2) The Navigation between web pages
3) Data Validators - Used to check the validity of UI input
4) Data Converters -Used to translate between UI and model

1.2.1.1 Managed beans are simple Java objects (POJO's) which are declared in "faces-config.xml" and can be used in an JSF application. For example you can define a Java object "User". Once you define the object in faces-config.xml you can use the attributes of User in your JSF UI components, e.g. by binding the value "loginName" of this object to an JSF input field.



1.3 JSF EL
In JSF you can access the values of a managed bean via value binding. For value binding the universal Expression Language (EL) is used (to access bean and / or methods). In JSF you do not need to specify the get() or set() method but just the variable name.
Method binding can be used to bind a JSF component, e.g. a button to an method of a Java class.


NOTE: JSP EL expressions are using the ${...} syntax. These EL expressions are immediately evaluated. JSF EL expressions are of the type #{...}. These are only evaluated when needed (and otherwise stored as strings).