Newbie question: "enctype" in jsf forms?

[Sol Mayer-Orn]

Hi,

I keep seeing that jsf forms have enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded" (which you can see if you view the html source through your browser).

Could anyone briefly explain what it means, and why it's required?
Does it mean that submitted form data is transfered to the server using a different encoding than standard html forms (that don't specify "enctype")?

And does it affect performance?
Thanks !

[Remko Strating]

With the enctype you're specifying what form of data you are sending.

The default value application/x-www-form-urlencoded", which is sufficient for almost any kind of form data which are mostly used within JSF.

Only if you're doing downloads you should specify an enctype.