I have started studying JSF and I would like to know what is the JAR to include within our classpath to start using JSF. Is it jsf-api or jsf-impl? Or we have to include both? And if it is both then why they are not merged?
I'll assume that you're not using a real Java EE application server like WildFly, TomEE, Payara, etc, but a barebones JSP/Servlet container like Tomcat which indeed doesn't ship with JSF out the box and you thus had to manually install it. Otherwise, all this fuss with JARs is unnecessary.
Is it jsf-api or jsf-impl? Or we have to include both?
You need both. The jsf-api.jar contains the API, which exist of almost only abstract classes and interfaces. It are the javax.faces.* types which you are importing and using in your code. The jsf-impl.jar contains the implementation, which exist of the real hard working code. The implementation is internally loaded via factories in API. It are the com.sun.faces.* classes which you are not supposed to import and use directly in your code. If you do, then you wouldn't be able to switch to a different JSF implementation, such as MyFaces.
And if it is both then why they are not merged?
There exist a merged JAR, the javax.faces.jar. You can pick this one instead of the two loose JARs.
See also:
Our JSF wiki page
JSF implementations and component libraries
Difference between Mojarra and MyFaces
In simplest terms, what is a factory?
How to properly install and configure JSF libraries via Maven?
Related
As JSF 2.3, #ManagedBean and other javax.faces.bean.* annotations are deprecated and replaced with JavaEE 6 CDI.
I successfully made a sample JSF project and deployed it to WebLogic using server implementations 'glassfish.jsf.jar' and with no implementation of JSF nor CDI in the WEB-INF/lib.
But I am afraid to be stuck with Server implementation that may be out of date in sometimes + my application behave differently during work in different application servers so I think it would be better if I have control over JSF implementation.
I spent the last 4 days for searching for a way to use a custom JSF implementation (Mojarra or MyFaces) using new CDI annotations or any other DI framework but with no luck.
I got that I must use JavaEE server implementation of JSF and CDI if I want to get rid of #ManagedAnnotations.
My question: is there a way to include my preferred implementation of JSF and CDI in my WAR that will be deployed to different application servers like WebLogic and WildFly.
Note: I found an old question from 2013 with No as an answer but I want to know is this answer still valid
Edit 02/11/2018:
I successfully install a project with embedded JSF (Mojarra) and CDI (Weld) without any problem on Tomcat Server. I think it's because Tomcat is Servlet Container so there are no conflicts.
I think my problem because of the conflict between my embedded CDI and Server implementation version of Weld. I can not find a solution to make my application is as blackbox.
I used this weblogic.xml
false
<prefer-application-packages>
<package-name>!javax.servlet.*</package-name>
</prefer-application-packages>
<prefer-application-resources>
<resource-name>!javax.servlet.*</resource-name>
</prefer-application-resources>
The other answer is sort of still valid. But there are sort of other (better) options
1 Also provide the full java-ee container as part of your app.
2 Require a minimal version of specific app servers
3 Tell customers they need at least specific versions of certain libraries
I have a Spring 4.1.1, JSF 2.2.3, Primefaces 5.1 web application that run on Java 8 and Tomcat 8.
Everything worked perfectly until my colleague added the javaee-api-7.0 as a dependency for javax for ActiveMQ.
With this jar in, every ajax call doesn't submit data to the backend. For example filters on primefaces datadatable would always pass an empty value, ajax refresh wouldn't take into account processed fields, etc. If I remove the jar, everything start to work again.
Unfortunately the logs don't show any error, the output is exactly the same of when the jar is not included. I'm not sure also with which component the conflict is, I would assume JSF but I have no clue and I can't find any documentation online.
Everything worked perfectly until my colleague added the javaee-api-7.0 as a dependency for javax for ActiveMQ.
You're indeed not supposed to have that JAR in webapp's runtime classpath. This kind of library is supposed to be already provided by the target Java EE container. Examples of Java EE containers are WildFly, GlassFish, Liberty, TomEE, etc. You've there however Tomcat, which is a barebones servletcontainer supporting from the huge Java EE API only JSP, Servlet and EL APIs, on which you have to manually install every other Java EE artifact, such as JSF and JMS.
The javaee-api.jar contains ALL Java EE APIs, including the JSF API (which is of 2.2.0 version). In your case, this one apparently got precedence in classloading over the JSF API version which you already had in /WEB-INF/lib. This will only result in "odd" behavior, because the loaded JSF impl version doesn't match the loaded JSF API version.
You need to solve it differently. You need to install JMS in its own API/impl JAR files, exactly like as you already did for JSF, and thus absolutely not via a "global" javaee-api.jar file. In case of ActiveMQ, the JMS API is available in activemq-all.jar. Use that one instead. It covers everything needed in order to get ActiveMQ to run on Tomcat.
See also:
how to include javax.jms.* in eclipse?
How do I import the javax.servlet API in my Eclipse project?
I've got a large code base that currently runs on JSF 1.1 on embedded Jetty 5.1.14 server (Servlet 2.4). I've managed to get a JSF 2.0.9 app running on this version of Jetty even though I'd expected to require servlet 2.5, and I add EL 2.1.2 & the JSF jar to WEB-INF/lib. This works on a jetty config that excludes JSF 1.1.
The production environment consists of a large number of war and jar files on a single server instance.
JSF 1.1 is currently in the server ext/lib folder, and in a single war file I'd like to include the JSF 2 jar in the WEB-INF/lib. This is not possible as the server JSF version will load first and cause classpath pollution.
However would it be possible to eliminate the JSF 1.1 jar loading in just the one war file with a custom classloader? The documentation seems to cater for the case of adding paths to the classpath rather than excluding things. I wasn't clear whether it's loaded in the context of the server as a whole or just the war.
A little more information: Another potential solution is to simply upgrade to Jetty 8 and JSF 2.1+. Apart from convincing management that this is a good idea, we use an old WebMethods7 version, this has a graphical layout tool that produces some XML that is translated by a Component Application Framework, which uses the JSF APIs to generate content (so only a very few JSPs). This would simply be a case of seeing if it works, and if not having a total rethink because of the need to keep supporting this WebMethods "code".
The main goal here is to ultimately run up to date software although not necessarily in one step.
Jetty5 is incredibly old at this point and I would recommend working on the update to jetty8, or waiting a couple of months and making the jump to jetty9 which we are currently releasing milestones for. Changes in the newer jvm's since then alone are enough reason to update your jetty container.
I don't know if this approach was supported in jetty5 or not, but in jetty6 we have ability on the webapp context to modify the classes that are exposed to the context via system and server classes. If those hooks exists then you should be able to tweak that specific context to not expose the classes in the jar in ext/lib.
I have a related question. I am migrating my project from Jboss to TomEE. I was using Mojarra JSF, and have been having problems trying to get everything working using MyFaces (view Encryption problems, UI problems, ajax problems, etc). I just want to include Mojarra jars in my project, but looks like they are clashing with the built-in MyFaces jars that comes bundled with TomEE. I keep getting UnSupported exceptions.
Is there a way to specify that the Mojarra JSF should override myfaces? Is there a web.xml parameter or something? By the way, I am not using Maven (I've seen many examples with pom.xml dependency tags that cannot help me).
I tried that for 3 days, after making many tweaks(error stack-> google ->change some exotic xml parameter-> new error stack->google->change some exotic xml parameter etc....), I could make it work, except that EJB injection was not working anymore (getting null). So I surrendered and use myfaces instead of mojarra.
JSF 1.1 and websphere 6.1 was working properly in my case. Once I deployed that to a websphere 7 server, I received the following error -
Application was not properly initialized at startup, could not find Factory: javax.faces.context.FacesContextFactoryat javax.faces.FactoryFinder.getFactory(FactoryFinder.java:270)
at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.init(FacesServlet.java:164)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.init(ServletWrapper.java:358)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapperImpl.init(ServletWrapperImpl.java:168)
Not sure what it means, I have enabled JSF1.2 as project facet in the RAD but still keep getting the above error message and none of my jsf files are working.
EDIT
After following BalusC's comment, I see the following directories are lookup by the code (this is the o/p of url.getPath())
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/profiles/AppSrv01/properties/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/properties/
/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/java/lib/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/lib/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/deploytool/itp/plugins/com.ibm.etools.ejbdeploy/runtime/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/installedConnectors/sib.api.jmsra.rar/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/installedConnectors/wmq.jmsra.rar/
/C:/DETSphere10/DET_FALL9.0/DETEJB/classes/
/C:/DETSphere10/DET_FALL9.0/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp0/DETWEB/
There is no jsf impl in among these directories. Now I am more confused as the original lib should be present under c:\IBM\SDP\runtimes\base_v7\plugins !!
This is a typical error when there are multiple different versioned JSF libraries in the classpath. Websphere ships with builtin JSF libraries. If you'd like to use the webapp-supplied JSF libraries, then you need to set the classloading policy to module after deploying. This usually defaults to application which means that the webapp libraries are loaded by the main classloader. The main classloader may happen to have loaded the JSF API library. When its version is different from the JSF IMPL library in the webapp, then you may receive this kind of errors.
Update to help with nailing down the root cause better here are 2 suggestions:
You can reveal all used classpath roots on the local disk file system as follows:
for (URL url : Collections.list(Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResources(""))) {
System.out.println(url.getPath());
}
Execute this in ServletContextListener#contextInitialized() or so.
(eventually after finding that out), install WinRAR, associate it with JAR file type and use its file-search facility to search for a JSF specific file like FacesContext.class and FacesContextImpl.class so that you can find all JAR's which contains the JSF API/impl. You can find out the exact JSF version by extracting the JAR and reading the MANIFEST file.
You need to keep the JSF JAR's (icu4j.jar and jsf-ibm.jar if you are using IBM's component library) in your /WEB-INF/lib folder.