JSF 2.0 Dynamic Views

I'm working on a web project which uses JSF 2.0, PrimeFaces and PrettyFaces as main frameworks / libraries. The pages have the following (common) structure: Header, Content, Footer.

Header: The Header always contains the same menu. This menu is a custom component, which generates a recursive html <ul><li> list containing <a href="url"> html links, this is all rendered with a custom renderer. The link looks like 'domain.com/website/datatable.xhtml?ref=2'. Where the ref=2 used to load the correct content from the database. I use prettyfaces to store this request value in a backingbean.

Question 1: Is it ok to render the <a href> links myself, or should I better add an HTMLCommandLink from my UIComponent and render that in the encodeBegin/End?

Question 2: I think passing variables like this is not really the JSF 2.0 style, how to do this in a better way?

Content: The content contains dynamic data. It can be a (primefaces) datatable, build with dynamic data from the database. It can also be a text page, also loaded from the database. Or a series of graphs. You got the point, it's dynamic. The content is based on the link pressed in the header menu. If the content is of type datatable, then I put the ref=2 variable to a DataTableBean (via prettyfaces), which then loads the correct datatable from the database. If the content is of type chart, I'll put it on the ChartBean.

开发者_Python百科Question 3: Is this a normal setup? Ideally I would like to update my content via Ajax.

I hope it's clear :)

1. It's ok to just output link yourself, commandLink is out of the question (it does a postback using javascript, it's not what you want);

2. Parameter are all in the param implicit object. You can insert them by a @ManagedProperty annotation, like this:

   @ManagedProperty("#{param.ref}")
   String ref
   
   // .. getters, setters (obligatory!)
   

   You can also use (if you are on JSF 2) the f:viewParam tag (a nice description http://blogs.oracle.com/rlubke/entry/jsf_2_0_bookmarability_view), you get the bonus of validation and conversion.

3. The way I understand it, your setup is rather complicated. Using a handwritten custom component for a menu is a huge overkill (at least judging from the provided description), a composite component would probably do. JSF has no special way of making ajax calls between views or embedding views one into another, so - unless you use iframes - your only choice would be to include all the possible pieces of content into a single view, wrapped in panels, and render them as required:

   <h:panelGroup rendered='#{backingBean.ref == 2}'>
    ... content 2 ...
   </h:panelGroup>
   

   and so on. Careful, this would be heavy on resources.

You could also write your own ajax solution in javascript. This would require all the pieces of content to be fully independent views, with their own forms. Also, all their postbacks would have to go through ajax, so the main page does not get reloaded.