Java Reference
In-Depth Information
<h:commandButton>
is used to submit a form to the server. The value of its
value
attribute is used to generate the text of the rendered button. The value of its
action
attribute is used to determine what page to display after the button is pressed.
In our example, we are using
static navigation
. When using JSF static navigation,
the value of the
action
attribute of a command button is hard-coded in the markup.
When using static navigation, the value of the action attribute of
<h:commandButton>
corresponds to the name of the page we want to navigate to,
minus its
.xhtml
extension. In our example, when the user clicks on the button, we
want to navigate to a file named
confirmation.xhtml
, therefore we used a value of
"confirmation"
for its
action
attribute.
An alternative to static navigation is
dynamic navigation
. When using dynamic
navigation, the value of the
action
attribute of the command button is a value
binding expression resolving to a method returning a
String
in a managed
bean. The method may then return different values based on certain conditions.
Navigation would then proceed to a different page depending on the value of the
method.
As long as it returns a
String
, the managed bean method executed when using
dynamic navigation can contain any logic inside it, and is frequently used to save
data in a managed bean into a database.
When using dynamic navigation, the return value of the method executed when
clicking the button must match the name of the page we want to navigate to (again,
minus the file extension).
In earlier versions of JSF, it was necessary to specify navigation rules in
faces-
config.xml
, with the introduction of the conventions introduced in the previous
paragraphs, this is no longer necessary.
