Alternative for displaytag

[Ilari Moilanen]

I have used displaytag in many of my applications. But now that I transferred to JSF i started doing some research and decided that maybe displaytag is not the right choice anymore. Displaytag is not developed anymore and there are many problems in integrating it to JSF (and more accurately to facelets since it is a jsp tag).

What I need is a tag library that allows me to do the the following:
-pagination
-exporting the html table to pdf and/or excel

I currently use JSF 2.0 (MyFaces implementation) and MyFaces Tomahawk with it.

Any suggestions?

[Tim Holloway]

Tomahawk has a table pagination control. So do most third-party extension tagsets, although pagination isn't part of the core JSF.

JSF is geared towards HTML output. Output in other formats (XML, Excel, PDF) are best done using servlets or JSPs, instead.

[Ilari Moilanen]

Thanks for your reply.

I am aware that many taglibs offer the pagination and even ordering of the table based on column data but I was hoping for a solution that offers both the html side and the other formats as well. Since I need the export option on multiple occasions, the fact that displaytag just created pdf or excel files with the data that would normally go to html table, was perfect for me. I understand that JSF mainly creates html but it can produce other kind of results if needed. If there is no good alternative for displaytag I will then try to use the displaytag itself or just implement the tags (or actions that produce the result I want) myself. If I produce the results myself (using iText probably with pdf files) I do have more flexibility with the outcome but it requires more work...

[Tim Holloway]

JSF is not greedy. You can safely use displaytags to output other page formats, but not on JSF pages (unless they are going to pop-up new windows).

In fact, you can even mix JSF and Struts in the same webapp. JSF takes over on JSF pages and stays out of the way the rest of the time. Since JSF backing beans are plain old J2EE properties, you can even communicate between JSF and JSP/servlet using session beans.

[Ilari Moilanen]

Yes, I can use jsp, normal servlets and struts etc if I like.

But I still need to know if there are alternatives to displaytag so If anyone has a knowledge of a good library or other means of doing the things it would be highly appreciated. And if anyone has made the displaytag work with JSF 2 that too would help me.

[Ilari Moilanen]

If anyone happens to need this I found multiple solutions. I just wasn't using google right...

Tomahawk
http://wiki.apache.org/myfaces/Exporting_DataTable_To_MS-Excel

IceFaces (data exporter)
http://component-showcase.icefaces.org/component-showcase/showcase.iface

PrimeFaces
http://www.primefaces.org/showcase/ui/exporterHome.jsf

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