JSF Introduction - An Introduction to
JSF Technology

Java Server Faces or JSF for short is another new exciting technology
for developing web applications based on Java technologies. This JSF
Introduction section introduces you with cool JSF technology.
In this "JSF Introduction" section you will be
introduced with the JSF technology, reasons that initiated the development
of JSF and the benefits of JSF.
Why JSF?
Let's first understand the reasons that initiated the JSF project and
why JSF is so hot these days. There are reasons for development of new
framework in-spite of many already existing technologies like JSP,
Servlets, Struts etc... If you have developed complex web based
applications in jsp then you must be knowing the problem faced with
those technologies. Here are the list of some of the problems faced with
the previous technologies like JSP and Servlets:
- Tedious and repetitive coding
Previous technologies like JSP make programmer to do a lot of
tedious and repetitive coding.
- Directly working with HTTP request and response
Using these technologies programmers directly work with HTTP request
and response objects and manipulates the data. For example if user
submits the registration form then programmer writes the code to get
the values of each element in the form into a variable for further
processing. When there is a need to retrieve the data from database
and then show on the form for editing, then in this case programmer
writes the code to retrieve the code from database and then set the
values in the forms.
- Non availability of IDE
Non availability of IDE is another major drawback which affects the
programmers productivity and development cost of the projects
increases.
JSF changes all that by giving intuitive framework to the developers.
Furthermore, JSP is specification and many vendors are developing their
own implementations. Both free and commercial implementations of JSF are
available these days. You can choose any one of them based on your requirement
and budget.
Now a days software vendors are developing IDE for developing JSF
based applications which is another good news for the learners of JSF
framework. Once you are familiar with the core concepts of the JSF you
can kick start the development of software projects using any IDE
available in the market. These changes in the programming world makes
the life of programmer much easier.
Java Server Faces is a component oriented and event driven framework
for web applications. JSF eases the development of GUI for web
applications. JSF allows the programmers to work with extensible user
interfaces like buttons, text boxes, check boxes etc... Programmer
writes the code for particular event such as button clicked. This makes
programming much easier and now the there is no need to write request
and response processing logic.

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