Apache: MyFaces & Tomahawk

I'm the beginner with JSF.

As I know, to start working with JSF I must download an implementation of it, for example, Apache MyFaces. But what are the libraries in the myfaces-core? I mean, what functions does each of them perform?

Also what are the Apache Tomahawk libraries? It is said that they provide various features. And what they are?

And finally, do I need to download Tomaha开发者_JAVA百科wk to work with facelets or it is enough to download core libraries?

If you know any useful links, please, share =)

The two major JSF implementations Mojarra and MyFaces just provide concrete implementations for the abstract JSF API (i.e. everything which is declared in javax.faces package and all its subpackages). It contains the FacesContext, ExternalContext, Application, @ManagedBean, etcetera. They also contains a basic set of mandatory HTML tags/components (the <h:xxx> ones) and some abstract (non-rendering) tags (the <f:xxx> ones). The implementation is just the minimum requirement to get started with JSF.

Then there are component libraries, like Tomahawk. They usually just adds some enhanced components on top of the standard implementation. For example a group of multiple radio buttons which can be positioned everything you want (<t:selectOneRadio layout="spread">), a datatable which preserves the datamodel for the subsequent request <t:dataTable preserveDataModel="true">, a table paginator (<t:dataScroller>) a kind of view scope (<t:saveState>), a colspan in the table (<t:panelGroup colspan="2">), a tree component (<t:tree>), etcetera. Just the "extra" which lacks in the standard implementation.

See also:

• JSF implementations and component libraries