Chapter 1. Introduction

Experience the benefits of JSF while working with AJAX. RichFaces is fully integrated into the JSF life cycle. Where other frameworks only allow access to the managed bean facility, RichFaces lets you access the action and value change listeners, and invokes server-side validators and converters during the AJAX request-response cycle.

Add AJAX capabilities to existing JSF applications. The RichFaces framework provides two component libraries (Core AJAX and UI). The Core library adds AJAX functionality to existing pages, so you need not write any JavaScript or replace existing components with new AJAX components manually. RichFaces enables page-wide rather than component-wide AJAX support, giving you the opportunity to define events on the page.

Quickly and easily create different views with a variety of components, available out-of-the-box. The RichFaces UI library contains components for adding rich user interface (UI) features to JSF applications, providing you with a broad variety of AJAX-enabled components with extensive skins support. RichFaces components are designed to integrate seamlessly with other third-party component libraries, so you have more options when you develop applications.

Write your own rich components with built-in AJAX support. The Component Development Kit (CDK) is constantly being expanded. It includes both code generation and templating facilities and a simple JSP-like (JavaServer Pages) syntax, letting you create first-class rich components with built-in AJAX functionality.

Package resources with application Java classes. RichFaces provides advanced support for managing different resource types, including images, JavaScript code, and CSS stylesheets. The resource framework makes it easier to include these resources in JAR files with your custom component code.

Quickly and easily generate binary resources. The resource framework can generate images, sounds, Excel spreadsheets, etc. in real time, so you can, for example, create images with the Java Graphics 2D library and other similar resources.

Customize the look and feel of your user interface with skins-based technology. RichFaces lets you easily define and manage different color schemes and other user interface parameters by using named skin parameters. This means you can access UI parameters from JSP and Java code to adjust your UI in real time. RichFaces includes a number of predefined skins to kick-start your application's development, but it is easy to create your own custom skins.

Simultaneously create and test your components, actions, listeners, and pages. RichFaces will soon include an automated testing facility to generate test cases for your component as you develop it. The testing framework tests not only the components, but also any other server-side or client-side functionality, including JavaScript code — and it will do so without deploying the test application into the Servlet container.