Chapter 2. Quick Start

2.1. Create your WAR structure
2.2. Create a minimal web.xml
2.3. Create a minimal faces-config.xml
2.4. Create Your JSF Markup
2.5. Run the application

In this chapter, we demonstrate the world's simplest JSF "Hello World" application.

2.1. Create your WAR structure

Go to your JBOSS_HOME/server/default/deploy directory and create these two subdirectories:

hellojsf.war
hellojsf.war/WEB-INF

2.2. Create a minimal web.xml

This web.xml only needs the minimum declarations shown below. Place the file in /WEB-INF.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<web-app>
</web-app>

Note

As shown, you don't necessarily need to declare a FacesServlet or mappings in web.xml. If you leave this out, JBoss AS6 will add it automatically with default mappings as demonstrated at the end of this chapter.

2.3. Create a minimal faces-config.xml

This faces-config.xml only needs the minimum declarations shown below. Place the file in /WEB-INF.

<faces-config xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
              xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
              xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_2_0.xsd"
              version="2.0">

</faces-config>

The faces-config.xml is only there to signal to JBoss AS that this is a JSF application. There are many other ways that JBoss AS6 could recognize this as a JSF application. This is explained in detail in chapter 3.

2.4. Create Your JSF Markup

We will use a single facelet. Create the file index.xhtml and put it in your deploy/hellojsf.war directory.

We use a little JSF2/EL 2.2 trick to avoid the need for a backing bean. We can grab the input value directly from the request object using a parameterized EL expression.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
                      "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
      xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core">

     <f:view>
        <h:form id="form1">
          <h:outputText value="Enter Your Name:"/>
          <h:inputText id="name"/>
          <h:commandButton value="Submit" />
        </h:form>
        <h:outputText rendered="#{not empty request.getParameter('form1:name')}"
                      value=" Hello #{request.getParameter('form1:name')}"/>
     </f:view>

</html>

2.5. Run the application

Now we're done! We only needed three files and two of those were just placeholders.

Start JBoss AS6 and put any of the following URLs into your browswer: