required="true" size="10"/> 

If you've never used JavaServer Faces, this page probably looks funky. The page

starts conventionally and declares the

taglib

directives for the JSF core and html tag

libraries, as well as the Struts Faces tag library.

To prevent collision with the JSTL core tag library, the taglib declara 

tion for the JSF core tag library commonly uses  f  instead of  c  as the

prefix. You can think of  f  as standing for  faces  or  framework. 

On this page, the

f:view

tag contains the entire content of the view. All JSF pages

must contain a

f:view

tag that encapsulates the custom JSF tags. The

s:form

tag,

from the Struts Faces library, creates an HTML form that can be submitted to a

Struts action. The

h:outputLabel

tags display label text for input fields declared with

the

h:inputText

tags. The

h:inputSecret

tag creates a password input field. The

h:

commandButton

 tag creates the form's submit button.

When this page was first written, yours truly inadvertently left off the

value

attribute

for the

h:inputText

and

h:inputSecret

tags. As Struts developers, the best practice is

to eschew specifying the

value

attribute for tags like

html:text

since the values are

automatically retrieved from the form based on name. When this application was

tested, data entered on the form wasn't populated to the action form. Because Jav 

aServer Faces uses a different binding convention than Struts, you must explicitly

bind each field to a form bean property. Adding the

value

attributes to the form as

shown solved the problem.

The Struts Faces tags resemble the Struts html tag library. By design, Struts develop 

ers will find it easy to learn the Struts Faces tags. The

s:form

tag, for example, closely

matches the Struts

html:form

tag. However, with the

s:form

tag, you use the JSF html

tags instead of the Struts html tags. Table 14 2 provides a complete list of tags

included with Struts Faces.

Table 14 2. Struts Faces tags

Tag name

Description

base

Creates a

 element, similar to the Struts

html:base

 tag

commandLink

Creates a hyperlink that can be used to submit a form

errors

Displays accumulated action errors, similar to the Struts

html:errors

 tag

form

Creates an HTML form that submits to a Struts action, similar to the Struts

html:form

 tag

468 | Chapter 14: Tiles and Other Presentation Approaches

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