Re: sitemesh and jsf

[Simon Kitching]

Well I guess you'll have to look at the source-code for the Sitemesh 
PageFilter then, or ask on the Sitemesh list. The problem is clearly 
that JSF-specific JSP tags are being executed but not within the scope 
of a FacesServlet. That's not a MyFaces problem, so unfortunately you're 
not likely to get much further help on this list.

However if you do get this figured out it would be great if you could 
post the solution here (or add a page to the wiki) for anyone who 
encounters this in the future.

Regards,

Simon

Garner Shawn wrote:
I tried this and it didn't work but am unsure why:

"ExternalContext.dispatch to execute the jsp servlet for processing its
template so maybe it's just as simple as ensuring the decorators file
for Sitemesh uses ".jsf" urls rather than ".jsp" urls to its template
files, in order to trigger the FacesServlet rather than just the
jsp-handler servlet?"

I got close by overriding the sitemesh filter and then doing a
chain.filter before calling the sitmesh filter.  It rendered the page
ok (not right) but it rendered the original page being decorated
twice.  Once at the beginning and then once later where it should have
been in the page.


Shawn
On 2/27/07, Simon Kitching <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The project I am currently working on uses Sitemesh with MyFaces, ie the
pages being *decorated* are JSF and it works. However the templates
themselves will need to be JSP only (not JSF) I believe; that's
certainly what we do.

In order for a JSP page containing JSF tags to work correctly, the JSF
FacesServlet must handle it. The FacesServlet sets up some JSF
infrastructure  on entry, then executes the JSP page (using
ExternalContext.dispatch). When JSF-specific tags execute the necessary
JSF infrastructure is therefore present. However on completion of the
servlet that infrastructure is destroyed by the FacesServlet.

What the sitemesh *filter* does is initially pass the incoming request
through without change so the primary "decorated" page is fetched, then
it determines what decorator template to use and processes that
*itself*. Sitemesh sets up the environment for its template to be
correctly processed as jsp, but is not smart enough to set up the
necessary environment for any JSF tags to execute successfully. And as
described above the JSF-specific environment was set up on FacesServlet
entry, but removed on FacesServlet exit so it is no longer available.

We work around that somewhat by defining a custom "proxyInclude" tag
which uses commons-httpclient to make requests. This tag can then be
embedded into a Sitemesh template to insert JSF-generated data (in
particular, a common header including a JsCookMenu menubar).

Maybe the Sitemesh PageFilter could be improved to be JSF-aware but we
haven't done that. Hmm..presumably the PageFilter does something like
ExternalContext.dispatch to execute the jsp servlet for processing its
template so maybe it's just as simple as ensuring the decorators file
for Sitemesh uses ".jsf" urls rather than ".jsp" urls to its template
files, in order to trigger the FacesServlet rather than just the
jsp-handler servlet?

Regards,

Simon


Ricardo Tercero Lozano wrote:
> As far as I know you cannot use JSF in Sitemesh decorators.
>
> Ricardo.
>
>
> On 2/26/07, *Garner Shawn* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
>
>     I'm trying to use sitmesh with JSF and am getting the following
>     exception:
>     This is my template decorator page and has a f:view page.
>     Is there something I have to do with this to initialize the
>     FacesContext for the decorators/templates?
>
>
>     javax.faces.FacesException: Faces context not found. 
getResponseWriter
>     will fail. Check if the FacesServlet has been initialized at all in
>     your web.xml configuration fileand if you are accessing your 
jsf-pages
>     through the correct mapping. E.g.: if your FacesServlet is 
mapped to
>     *.jsf (with the <servlet-mapping>-element), you need to access your
>     pages as 'sample.jsf'. If you tried to access 'sample.jsp', 
you'd get
>     this error-message.
>            javax.faces.webapp.UIComponentTag.setupResponseWriter
>     (UIComponentTag.java:926)
>
>     
javax.faces.webapp.UIComponentTag.doStartTag(UIComponentTag.java:313)
>
>     org.apache.myfaces.taglib.core.ViewTag.doStartTag(ViewTag.java:73)
>
>     org.apache.jsp.decorators.andreasTemplate_jsp._jspx_meth_f_view_0
>     (andreasTemplate_jsp.java:146)
>
>     
org.apache.jsp.decorators.andreasTemplate_jsp._jspService(andreasTemplate_jsp.java:122) 

>
>     org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:97)
>            javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service 
(HttpServlet.java:802)
>
>     
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:332) 

>
>     
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:314)
>            org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service
>     (JspServlet.java:264)
>            javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:802)
>
>     
com.age.j.soft.sitemesh.TemplateFilterImpl.applyDecorator(TemplateFilterImpl.java:49) 

>            com.opensymphony.module.sitemesh.filter.PageFilter.doFilter
>     (PageFilter.java:62)
>
>     
org.apache.myfaces.webapp.filter.ExtensionsFilter.doFilter(ExtensionsFilter.java:144) 

>
>