Is ajax4jsf dead? What other AJAX libraries for JSF exist?

Question

I am currently using the JSF JBoss RichFaces component library for the project I'm working on. It works pretty well overall, especially the AJAX support provided by ajax4jsf (A4J), but I usually find the very inflexible table layout used for almost every component, and all this RichFaces leather stuff is very annoying. It would be nice if there were some components that simply provided functionality and only minimal layout / style. I originally planned to use ICEfaces, but it didn’t work very well either, and also brings with it a lot of predefined styles, so RichFaces seems to be the best option right now.

Now I thought it would be nice to develop a clean tag library that provides some useful components found in RichFaces, ICEfaces, or Tomahawk (not all, of course!) That don't use any predefined style and generate markup that can be easily styled using CSS.

I wanted to use the ajax4jsf library to support AJAX, because I think it works very well and integrates easily into standard JSF using facelets. But it seems that since he switched to JBoss, he is no longer available as a separate library. You can download only the entire RichFaces package that I do not need.

Is the ajax4jsf (A4J) project dead? If so, what are the alternatives?

Answer 1

If you read the ajax4jsf forum , you will see that it has been merged with Richfaces.

You do not need to use Richfaces components on your page, so you have a problem with JAR in your project?

I agree that many JSF components (not just Richfaces) are table-based (e.g. h: selectManyCheckbox). Do not forget that for many of them it is easy to write a new renderer. I did this for h: selectManyCheckbox so that checkboxes appear inside divs instead of tables. I would think that you should do the same for Richfaces components ... but if so, then why use them?

You may find it easier / more enjoyable to use jQuery user interface elements and bind them back to your Beans with a4j: jsFunction (or similar).

Answer 2

Here you can find many alternatives:

JSF AJAX Component Library Feature Matrix

Answer 3

If you're feeling adventurous, take a look at JSF 2 . It introduces JSP to Facelets migration technologies and is built into AJAX Support . David Geary hosted a series of JSF 2 fu articles on developerWorks (although you'll have to wait 3 parts for AJAX stuff), Ed Burns and Jim Driscoll showed various features while developing the new API so you can also test your blogs.

Answer 4

Just a comment. I started using ice surfaces. I am also a web designer, and I have a very detailed understanding of the components of the ice components in relation to my web application. I was very upset at the time when I needed to redefine the appearance of the ice surface components using css. The components had a lot of nested table layouts that annoyed me.

When I switched to richfaces. I found that it was much easier to redefine the look of n, because richfaces has an integrated system that redefines the look of n in css. The css provided to the components had similar and reasonable class names that made prediction and cancellation easier.