> By the way, when you say the site 'only uses JSP' do you mean no Struts > or other framework is involved? In other words just JSP submitting to a > servlet and then redirecting/forwarding to another JSP?
No framework at all - sometimes a Java class redirects and sometimes a JSP redirects. Its a nightmare. > If you do go the JSF route, I'd appreciate knowing how your experience > migrating the app went. I've already implemented a separate webapp product with good success using Struts. Part of the reason for me doing this was to give JSF/Shale a fair evaluation. The webapp being refactored is our company website/intranet so its a good candidate to try the new technology. I agree with you, the hardest thing for me to adapt to was the complete abstraction of the Servlet API. I find it rather restrictive, but I think that may be because I am still learning the framework. Anyway, I will let you know if it was a good decision or not. -----Original Message----- From: Rick Reumann [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 3:27 PM To: Struts Users Mailing List Subject: Re: Refactoring JSP to JSF (and then possibly to Shale) Chan, Jim wrote the following on 1/10/2006 5:35 PM: > I am refactoring my company's JSP website because the code uses only JSP to > control navigation. You can imagine its pretty ugly. Anyway, I decided to > use JSF and possibly move to Shale once I've gained a handle on the > framework. I successfully deployed some of the pages using MyFaces because > it has a simple integration with Tiles. > > Anyone who tried to refactor JSP to JSF will know that it takes some work to > adapt the existing html/JSP code to utilize the JSF tags. Because I'm under > time constraints, I've really only used JSF tags for controls that need to > be bound the backing beans. All other html/JSP code was wrapped with > everybody's favorite tag - <f:verbatim>. There are verbatim tags everywhere > - yikes. I am hoping I can refactor them out at some later time, but my > biggest dream is to have the JSF specification at the container level so > non-JSF text do not have to be buffered at all. > > Anyway, I wanted to know if: > > - I am taking a good approach to refactoring the existing webapp? > - Will JSF evolve to a point where <f:verbatim> tag is not needed? Actually you bring up one of the reasons I'm not in love JSF at the moment. I know most people like the idea of using pre-built or custom renderers and get all googly eyed over the nice things you can get out-of-the-box from MyFaces or Oracle ADF, but I guess I'm still old-school and like the control of building the front end how I want with simple JSTL and html. From my brief time with JSF I felt sort of constrained having to use the DataTable (I think that's what it was called:) to iterate over stuff for display purposes etc. Not saying the concept of renderers is bad at all and I guess a set of common controls is pretty cool. I just know from experience that pre-built stuff always ends up having to be tweaked to meet some crazy business requirement I end up having to deal with. At least when I'm working with straight html (and the annoying dhtml stuff) I can create everything how I want. By the way, when you say the site 'only uses JSP' do you mean no Struts or other framework is involved? In other words just JSP submitting to a servlet and then redirecting/forwarding to another JSP? I'm more comfortable with Struts so of course I'd feel better taking that approach. You could even clean up all your navigation issues using Struts and reuse a lot of your old code - including the front end stuff. This way you can start small and then implement more and more struts pieces as you see fit. For example I'm assuming you are just doing typical request.getParameter stuff in your Servlets. Well you could still use Struts to go to an Action(a Servlet) and basically put your same exact old Servlet code in there. You could in theory clean up all your navigation woes without having to change that much of your existing code. This actually goes again to something that I do like about Struts - it is not too far removed from the ServletAPI. You can still mess around with typical Request and Session stuff in your Action classes just like you could in any other Servlet (others of course would see this as a weakness - ie difficult to unit test Actions etc and they have valid points there). JSF, at least from what I've seen, is much further removed from the basic ServletAPI so in your case under time constraints I'm thinking you'd have more work to do migrating it to JSF. I guess a lot also depends on how much existing code you want to reuse and your existing architecture. If you plan to rewrite a lot of stuff anyway, and you are comfortable with JSF, then go for it. If you do go the JSF route, I'd appreciate knowing how your experience migrating the app went. -- Rick --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
