Handling User Input in JSF 2.0 Applications - A Place for Questions & Discussion on the TSS Tutorial

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

I just published a (corrected URL) video tutorial over at TheServerSide.com, but the new V7 content management system has trouble displaying Java code, so I thought I'd leverage the advanced capabilities of the JavaRanch's code formatting system and give viewers a nice, friendly place they could come to if they wanted to copy and paste some code into their JSF 2.0 development environments.

I also figured if people were having any trouble getting the program to work, they could come here and get some questions answered.

It's a simple and fun to program little Rock-Paper-Scissors application.

Here's the text version of the tutorial if you want to read along. Ignore the ads and focus on the content and you'll be fine: Handling User Input: Text Version of the Tutorial

Here's the coderanch discussion of the first tutorial: Getting Started with JSF Thread

::Shameless Plug:: And here's a link to my book: JSF 2.0 Made Easy






Here is the code and formatted text in the order in which it appears in the tutorial:

The Basic Class

package com.mcnz.jsf;
  public class GameBean {
}

Old School Code Compilation (Yes, we develop our JSF Apps using javac and the JDK in this tutorial.)

C:\_easyjsf\WEB-INF\classes> 
   C:\_jdk1.6\bin\javac -classpath "C:\_easyjsf\WEB-INF\lib\*" com\mcnz\jsf\*.java

Progressively More Complex GameBean

package com.mcnz.jsf;
public class GameBean {
  private String computerGesture = null;
  private String clientGesture = null;

  public String getClientGesture() {return clientGesture;}
  public String getComputerGesture() {return computerGesture;}

  public void setClientGesture(String clientGesture) {
    this.clientGesture = clientGesture;
  }

  public void setComputerGesture(String computerGesture) {
    this.computerGesture = computerGesture;
  }
}

The Higher Algebra of the getResult() Method

 public String getResult() {
   String result = null;
   if (clientGesture != null) {
     result = "error";
     if (clientGesture.equals("paper")) {result = "win";}
     if (clientGesture.equals("scissors")) {result = "loss";}
     if (clientGesture.equals("rock")) {result = "draw";}
   }
   return result;
  }		
	

The Simple executeGameLogic() Method

public void executeGameLogic(javax.faces.event.ActionEvent event){
  this.computerGesture = "rock"; /* we always choose rock! */
}

The Lame reset() Method (I'm allowed to call it lame. I wrote the darn thing...)

public void reset(javax.faces.event.ActionEvent event) {
  computerGesture = null;
  clientGesture = null;
}

The Complete GameBean.java Class (Without Annotations)

package com.mcnz.jsf;
public class GameBean {

 private String computerGesture = null;
 private String clientGesture = null;

 public void executeGameLogic(javax.faces.event.ActionEvent event){
   this.computerGesture = "rock"; /* we always choose rock! */
  }
  public String getResult() {
   String result = null;
   if (clientGesture != null) {
     result = "error";
     if (clientGesture.equals("paper")) {result = "win";}
     if (clientGesture.equals("scissors")) {result = "loss";}
     if (clientGesture.equals("rock")) {result = "draw";}
   }
   return result;
  }
  public void reset(javax.faces.event.ActionEvent event) {
    computerGesture = null;  
    clientGesture = null;
  }
  public String getClientGesture() {return clientGesture;}
  public void setClientGesture(String clientGesture) {
    this.clientGesture = clientGesture;
  }
  public String getComputerGesture() {return computerGesture;}
  public void setComputerGesture(String computerGesture) {
    this.computerGesture = computerGesture;
  }
}

The Complete GameBean.java Class (WITH Annotations)

package com.mcnz.jsf;
import javax.faces.bean.*;


@ManagedBean
@RequestScoped

public class GameBean { 
 private String computerGesture = null;
 private String clientGesture = null;

 public void executeGameLogic(javax.faces.event.ActionEvent event){
   this.computerGesture = "rock"; /* we always choose rock! */
  }
 public String getResult() {
   String result = null;
   if (clientGesture != null) {
     result = "error";
     if (clientGesture.equals("paper")) {result = "win";}
     if (clientGesture.equals("scissors")) {result = "loss";}
     if (clientGesture.equals("rock")) {result = "draw";}
   }
   return result;
  }
  public void reset(javax.faces.event.ActionEvent event) {
    computerGesture = null;  
    clientGesture = null;
  }
  public String getClientGesture() {return clientGesture;}
  public void setClientGesture(String clientGesture) {
    this.clientGesture = clientGesture;
  }
  public String getComputerGesture() {return computerGesture;}
  public void setComputerGesture(String computerGesture) {
    this.computerGesture = computerGesture;
  }

}	

The Good Old faces-config.xml File (Not Needed)

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?> <faces-config xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_2_0.xsd" version="2.0"> <managed-bean> <managed-bean-name>gameBean</managed-bean-name> <managed-bean-class>com.mcnz.jsf.GameBean</managed-bean-class> <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope> </managed-bean> </faces-config>

The Web Page - index.xhtml
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"> <h:body> <h:form id="rpsgame"> Please choose between Rock Paper and Scissors: <h:inputText id="gesture" value="#{gameBean.clientGesture}" /> <h:commandButton id="play" value="Play!" actionListener="#{gameBean.executeGameLogic}" /> <h:commandButton id="reset" value="Reset" actionListener="#{gameBean.reset}" /> <p><b> <h:outputText id="gameresult" value="#{gameBean.result}"/> </b></p> </h:form> </h:body> </html>

And here's how I compiled it:
C:\_easyjsf\WEB-INF\classes> C:\_jdk1.6\bin\javac -classpath "C:\_easyjsf\WEB-INF\lib\*" com\mcnz\jsf\*.java

And here's how I jarred it up:

C:\_easyjsf> %JAVA_HOME%\bin\jar -cvf easyjsf.war *.*

And here's the generated HTML that gets sent to the client when you hit the application:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <body> <form id="rpsgame" name="rpsgame" method="post" action="/easyjsf/index.faces" > <input type="hidden" name="rpsgame" value="rpsgame" /> Please choose between Rock Paper and Scissors: <input id="rpsgame:gesture" type="text" name="rpsgame:gesture" /> <input id="rpsgame:play" type="submit" name="rpsgame:play" value="Play!" /> <input id="rpsgame:reset" type="submit" name="rpsgame:reset" value="Reset" /> <p><b> <span id="rpsgame:gameresult"> </span> </b></p> <input type="hidden" name="javax.faces.ViewState" id="javax.faces.ViewState" value="3573802154087423913:254735314327150470" autocomplete="off" /> </form> </body> </html>


Here's the text version of the tutorial if you want to read along. Ignore the ads and focus on the content and you'll be fine: Handling User Input: Text Version of the Tutorial

::Shameless Plug:: And here's a link to my book: JSF 2.0 Made Easy


*Corrected URL: http://jsf.mcnz.com/tutorials/videos.jsp?training=05managedbeansuserinput

[CiaranP DEire]

Hi Cameron

The link to the video tutorial you mentioned here doesn't seem to be active anymore - I'm getting a 'page could not be found' error.

Is there an updated address??

Cheers!

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

Here's a corrected URL: http://jsf.mcnz.com/tutorials/videos.jsp?training=05managedbeansuserinput

Thanks!

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

Ooops...