JSF 2.0 and Implicit Navigation

[Justin Harrison]

I was going through my various JSF xhtml files and creating the connections in the faces-config.xml method when I accidentally spelled a method name wrong in faces-config... and the connection still worked!

Turns out there is a feature in JSF 2.0 called "Implicit Navigation" that allows you to connect pages without using faces-config.xml. You just have to put the page name (without the extension) as your outcome string. By way of example: If you have two pages, one called page1.xhtml and another called page2.xhtml, and you want to link them together using a command button on page1 that transitions to page2, you can do the following:

<h:commandButton action="page2" value=Go to page2" />

You can also do the following in your managed bean:

<h:commandButton action="#{SomeBean.goToPage2}" value="Go to page2" />

if you add to SomeBean:

public String goToPage2() {
return "page2"; //Sends you to page2
}

Doing it in your managed bean allows you to conditionally redirect to different pages without touching the faces-config.

This feature will save me a lot of time, so Dr. Ramnath asked me to post it here so that other teams can benefit too if they have not yet discovered this feature.