Recently ran across a blog entry where Rob Lambert asked if anyone was actually using JSF? My initial experience is I don’t know anyone using it for any real project. Struts is pretty common, I occasionally here about something like Velocity, but never JSF.
I remember looking into local training classes when I thought JSF might be viable in our area around Sacramento. Turned out there was only one class available in the last 9 months and it got canceled. I walked through 300+ pages of JSF in Action, but I got frustrated that it was too front end focused, and it had some nasty javascript it implemented for simple things like links that caused turmoil for using JWebUnit on it. In the end we went with Struts. I’m thinking JSF may very likely die on the vine.
Where have you been? JSF rad tools are now starting to appear from Oracle, Sun and others. Oracle have just announced that their $1,000 JDeveloper IDE is now free. Oracle are also throwing their wieght behind JSF, along with Sun and IBM.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/java/jsf.html
The JSF specification was designed to be used along with RAD IDE’s. JSF is a RAD environment when using an complete implementation that include IDE support.
A search for JSF developers in my region of the world (London) reveals a very hefty demand for JSF developers, or struts developers who will be required to switch to JSF.
My research based on news from across the industry is that struts is, and will continue to become redundant. Any leftover functionality formerly provided by struts will now be included into the JSF spec by the man who created both struts and jsf, Craig McLanahan.
Man, there is huge activity in the area of JSF as anyone who was at JavaOne would know.
JSF was slow out of the starting gates (Struts was too) but this was due to the lack of tool support which is now no longer the case. There are several big tools from the big corporate guns that support JSF including: Java Studio Creator from Sun, JDeveloper from Oracle (free), IBM Rational Application Developer for Eclipse and IBM Websphere Studio. There are also others such as Exadel Studio for Eclipse (free).
On top of that, new implementations of the JSF specifications are appearing, some from the big guns, along with a range of new RenderKits.
There are plans to integrate other frameworks into JSF:
http://www.jsfcentral.com/redirect?site=http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=33701&listingTitle=A%20plan%20to%20integrate%20Spring%20Web%20Flow%20and%20JSF&categoryTitle=News&categoryPath=index.html
If by your statement “but I got frustrated that it was too front end focused” you mean that what *you* do doesn’t require much in the way of a front end, then good luck to you. Most web projects spend too much time messing around with front ends and validation. JSF allows developers to plug in new component sets, in addition to the standard component sets. Currently there are many appearing on the market, some from major vendors like Oracle. JSF also allows developers to build their own components and component sets. These can of course, all be dragged and dropped onto the page!
> I’m thinking JSF may very likely die on the vine.
As the last poster said, where have you been?
> I occasionally here about something like Velocity, but never JSF.
Every second java blog post refers to JSF. Where have you been?
> In the end we went with Struts.
err…
Results from a JSF poll on Oracle’s website.
What are your JSF plans?
Currently using 14.6%
Currently evaluating 35.5%
Will look into it this year 27.3%
Not going to use JSF 6.8%
Don’t know yet 15.8%
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/index.html
From the Apache organization regarding the discontinuation of Struts…
The Apache Struts team is pleased to announce the adoption of its latest subproject, Struts Shale, a JSF-based framework. [snip]
Right now, there are no concrete plans for a 2.x release of Struts Classic. The people working on the 1.x series want to evolve the code base without breaking backward compatibility. If we do our job right, then a 2.x release may never be needed. [snip]
It’s an entirely new codebase. Struts Shale is an MVC framework for web applications, like Struts Classic, but it’s a fresh start. Struts Shale is the best choice for developers eager to leverage the latest technologies, like JavaServer Faces.
http://www.apachenews.org/archives/000552.html