To me, this sounds like a great way to implement Grails-style plugin support. I haven't worked with Grails closely enough to know for sure, however. Thoughts? --- Kito D. Mann -- Author, JavaServer Faces in Action http://twitter.com/kito99 http://twitter.com/jsfcentral http://www.virtua.com - JSF/Java EE consulting, training, and mentoring http://www.JSFCentral.com - JavaServer Faces FAQ, news, and info +1 203-404-4848 x3
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Bernhard Huemer <bernhard.hue...@gmail.com > wrote: > Hello, > > recently I've thought of using JSF in an OSGi environment because of the > greater modularity it would provide for developers. JSF already provides > reusability regarding the user interface, i.e. JSF provides the possibility > to create user interface components, but what do you do if you want to reuse > more aspects of previous applications than just user interface fragements? > How to reuse dialogs, i.e. certain workflows, etc..? > > OSGi already does provide these reusability features and hence I've adapted > MyFaces in a way so that it's runnable in an OSGi container. Basically you > just have to deploy an implementation of the OSGi HTTP Service (e.g. Pax Web > [1]), the two MyFaces bundles (myfaces-api and myfaces-impl) and your web > application bundles. Basically a BundleListener keeps track of all bundles > being deployed to the OSGi container, so if the user installs a JSF bundle > MyFaces gets notified and merges the current configuration with the > configuration of the new bundle. > > However, even though I've been able to implement a running version, I had > to change major parts of MyFaces. For example, using OSGi you can't use the > context class loader if you want to create a new instance for a class that > resides in a different bundle (think of managed beans, MyFaces is > responsible for creating the instance, but the class file is located in a > different bundle) and hence I had to rewrite the configuration module (e.g. > a LifecycleProvider implementation receives just a class name of the managed > bean to instantiate assuming that it can load the class using the context > class loader, but that won't work in the case of an OSGi environment). > > Therefore I'd like to know if I should start contributing these changes? > (and if so, should I create a different branch at first, etc.?) > > regards, > Bernhard > > [1]: http://wiki.ops4j.org/display/paxweb/Pax+Web >
