* Contrary to what many people say, I don't find it to be any simpler than
Struts or other frameworks I've looked at. I have to factor in the fact
that I'm not a JSF expert with this next statement, but I actually find it
to be somewhat *more* complex. I suspect there needs to be a
differentiation between conceptual complexity and hands-on complexity
though.
Complexity is in the eye of the beholder. Coming to Java from a
scripting background (Tcl/AOLserver) I originally embraced the
request/response cycle and resented frameworks like JSF that try to hide
it from me. But I also see lots of other developers who have worked in
Java for years and are new to web development, and have a lot of trouble
figuring out what code really is supposed to run whenever they click a
button.
So I am starting to warm up to JSF gradually, especially after playing
with the MyFaces examples. In some cases, I'm finding that JSF can
actually *simplify* things greatly:
- form validation defined inline with the form instead of in some
separate class or XML file
- forms with multiple submit buttons: #{bean.foo} and #{bean.bar} is
much more obvious than MappingDispatchAction
- pre-populating a form (load object for edit): by having POJO backing
beans rather than extending Action/ActionForm, you don't have to
manually figure out the right ActionForm subclass to instantiate or the
right attribute key to shove the form in request scope with. You just
populate "this".
On the other hand, JSF does make doing some simple things hard. Like if
you want to be able to bookmark a link to an object like
"showObject.do?id=993", clearly a legal GET URL, it's not clear how you
would do that (or even if its possible).
So like everything else it's a trade-off. Your cost-benefit analysis is
going to depend on your individual app. Personally, I'm just salivating
over the MyFaces treeTable plus AjaxAnywhere, because I haven't found a
way to get the same widget off-the-shelf with Struts. :-)
-- Bill
--
Bill Schneider
Chief Architect
Vecna Technologies, Inc.
5004 Lehigh Road, Suite B
College Park, MD 20740
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
t: 301-864-7594
f: 301-699-3180
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