Mastering JavaServer Faces (Java) [Paperback]

Bill Dudney (Author), Jonathan Lehr (Author), Bill Willis (Author), LeRoy Mattingly (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471462071 | ISBN-13: 978-0471462071 | Publication Date: June 7, 2004 | Edition: 1

Harness the power of JavaServer Faces to create your own server-side user interfaces for the Web

This innovative book arms you with the tools to utilize JavaServer Faces (JSF), a new standard that will make building user interfaces for J2EE(TM) applications a lot easier. The authors begin by painting the architectural big picture-covering everything from the Patterns that are used in the implementation to the typical JSF Request/Response lifecycle. Next, you'll learn how to use JSF in the real world by uncovering the various pieces of the JSF component model, such as UI components, events and validation. The authors then explain how to apply JSF, including how to integrate JSF user interfaces with the Business Tier and how to render your own user interface components. By following this approach, you'll be able to confidently create and validate your own custom applications that meet the needs of your company.

Whether working in J2EE or J2SE(TM), this book will show you how to:
* Use UI Components to build your user interface
* Ensure that the data you store meets the business rules for your application
* Integrate JSF with JSPs through the custom Tag feature in JSP implementations
* Build JSF applications that interact with either EJBs or POJOs
* Validate a new component and queue events to invoke custom application logic
* Move your application from Struts to JSF

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Harness the power of JavaServer Faces to create your own server-side user interfaces for the Web

This innovative book arms you with the tools to utilize JavaServer Faces (JSF), a new standard that will make building user interfaces for J2EE™ applications a lot easier. The authors begin by painting the architectural big picture–covering everything from the Patterns that are used in the implementation to the typical JSF Request/Response lifecycle. Next, you’ll learn how to use JSF in the real world by uncovering the various pieces of the JSF component model, such as UI components, events and validation. The authors then explain how to apply JSF, including how to integrate JSF user interfaces with the Business Tier and how to render your own user interface components. By following this approach, you’ll be able to confidently create and validate your own custom applications that meet the needs of your company.

Whether working in J2EE or J2SE™, this book will show you how to:

• Use UI Components to build your user interface
• Ensure that the data you store meets the business rules for your application
• Integrate JSF with JSPs through the custom Tag feature in JSP implementations
• Build JSF applications that interact with either EJBs or POJOs
• Validate a new component and queue events to invoke custom application logic
• Move your application from Struts to JSF

About the Author

BILL DUDNEY is a Java architect with Object Systems Group. He is also a coauthor of Jakarta Pitfalls and J2EE AntiPatterns (both from Wiley).

JONATHAN LEHR is a software developer, architect, speaker, and author, whose works include Jakarta Commons Live (SourceBeat) and Jakarta Pitfalls (Wiley).

BILL WILLIS has over twelve years’ experience in the software industry. Bill is currently an enterprise architect and mentor at Object Systems Group. He is also the director of PatternsCentral.com, a community portal devoted to software patterns.

LeROY MATTINGLY is currently with Tecton Software, Inc. He has over ten years’ experience building large scale object-oriented systems. He also created The Integrator–a tool for authoring and managing the use case process while at OSGTools, a subsidiary of Object Systems Group.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (June 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471462071
• ISBN-13: 978-0471462071
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #417,639 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bill Dudney is a software developer and entrepreneur currently building software for the Mac. Bill started his computing career on a NeXT cube with a magneto-optical drive running NeXTStep 0.9. He's the author of iPhone SDK Development and Core Animation for OS X and the iPhone for the Pragmatic Programmers, as well as a series of iPhone development screencasts. He has several iPhone applications currently selling on the App Store from his company Gala Factory Software.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best JSF Book I've Read Yet, January 17, 2005

By 

Sean Schofield - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mastering JavaServer Faces (Java) (Paperback)

This is the best JSF book I've read to date. To begin with, its an excellent value. There is no wasted space. The O'Reilly book has 242 pages of appendix which basically regurgitates the API (shame!) You won't find that here. Also, the authors do not waste your time explaining what a JSP page is, etc.

The book starts off with an overview of MVC but it goes beyond explaining what MVC is (which is where most books stop) but explains how MVC is used in Swing and Struts and compares that to how it is employed in JSF. It also goes into some of the rationale for why things in JSF were designed the way they were. If you're not into that - fine, but at least its not an explanation of how to deploy a Servlet.

This book provides the most thorough explanation of how things work in JSF and provides impressive coverage of the lifecylce. These are the things you are going to have to know once you finish your "Hello World" programs and need to start actually writing a program.

I've read the Core and O'Reilly books so far. I'd have to rate this one the best. Perhaps my impressions were affected by the fact that I read these books first, but I feel like the reader will learn more from this book. It doesn't waste your time writing "Hello Faces" examples in chapter one just to appease the reader. You won't get down and dirty with the code to the middle of the book but that is how it should be in my opinion.

Also, if you are a Struts programmer, this book is much better than the others in discussing Struts and how it compares. It also provides some detail about integrating the two etc. Not as much as I would have liked, but much much more than the other books.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Could be better, April 5, 2005

By 

Jose R. C. Martins "Roger" (São Paulo, São Paulo Brazil) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mastering JavaServer Faces (Java) (Paperback)

The problem is that the book has a lot of mistakes and don't explain some mechanism like ValueBinding. The book use hibernate to persist data to database and this can be a problem to people who don't know this technology, in my opinion they should have used plain JDBC technology, it would be much easier to the readers.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid treatment of JSF technology..., September 21, 2004

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mastering JavaServer Faces (Java) (Paperback)

I recently got a chance to review Wiley's book Mastering JavaServer Faces by Bill Dudney, Jonathan Lehr, Bill Willis, and LeRoy Mattingly. Overall, this is a nice book if you're looking to get involved in JSF technology.

Chapter list: JSF Patterns and Architecture; Elements of JSF; JSF Request-Processing Life Cycle; JSF Configuration; JSP Integration in JSF; UI Components; Navigation, Actions, and Listeners; Validation and Conversion; Building JSF Applications; Custom JSF Components; Converting a Struts Application to JSF; What's on the Web Site; References; Index

This is primarily a learning tool for JSF with a fair amount of reference material thrown in. In chapters 4 through 8, you'll touch on each main area of JSF coding, and the authors provide a solid mix of learning and reference lists for your on-going use as you continue down the JSF path. They don't skimp on code listings, so you'll have some decent examples to draw upon as you start to build your own applications. They also use a variety of UML diagrams to show the flow of a JSF program and how the class structure is laid out. This is good in that you'll run into this type of notation in quite a few places, so you'll get a good understanding of it here.

The other thing I liked about this book was the "why" portion in the patterns and architecture section. Too often, a book that is teaching you a new technology will not cover a lot of best practices and patterns on how programs should be built using the new tool. By providing this type of information up front, the reader should be able to get into the right mindset and develop solid coding practices and concepts from the start.

Bottom line... a solid book with good information, and you should be happy with the result.