Before you start
This tutorial shows Java programmers how to build highly interactive Java EE applications for deployment on Apache Geronimo using the JSF components. The tutorial assumes you'll be using the Eclipse IDE as your development platform.
This tutorial introduces you to Apache Tomahawk, a set of complementary components that will improve the interface of your JSF application. You'll continue developing the front end for the sign-up pages of the developer forum by adding some input validators and additional input widgets.
This tutorial is Part 2 of a five-part series about building Apache Geronimo applications using JSF. Here's a rundown of the entire series:
- Part 1: Use Eclipse and Apache MyFaces Core to build a basic application introduced you to using Apache's MyFaces implementation of the JSF standard with Geronimo, a free application server (also from Apache). This tutorial showed you how to use the Eclipse IDE's Web Tool Platform (WTP) to build JSF applications.
- Part 2: Using Tomahawk with JavaServer Faces shows you how to integrate Apache Tomahawk components with your Geronimo application. Tomahawk provides several custom components that are 100% compatible with JSF.
- Part 3: Using Ajax4jsf with JavaServer Faces demonstrates how to use Sun's free open source framework, Ajax4jsf, to add Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) capabilities to your Geronimo application.
- Part 4: Extend JSF with Apache Trinidad components teaches you how to integrate components from Apache Trinidad, the open source version of ADF Faces, with your Geronimo application to enhance your JSF application's interface.
- Part 5: Integrating your JSF Application with Spring shows you how to integrate your JSF applications with the Spring Framework, a popular framework that makes it easier for Geronimo developers to build Java EE applications.
You need the following tools to follow along with this tutorial:
- Geronimo, Apache's Java EE server project. Geronimo comes in Tomcat and Jetty flavors, depending on your needs. We used the Jetty flavor (version 1.1) because it's smaller.
- MyFaces, Apache's JSF implementation. Download the core version (without Tomcat) from Apache. We used version 1.1.3 with this tutorial.
- Tomahawk, which provides additional components and input validators for use with MyFaces, while still maintaining 100% JSF compatibility.
- Eclipse, the extensible open source IDE that supports a wide range of languages and platforms.
- Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP), which adds support for XML and JavaScript editing, as well as preliminary JSF support, to Eclipse.
- Java 1.4 or newer installed on your system. Eclipse binaries come with their own Java run time, but Geronimo and MyFaces don't (that would seriously bloat up the download archives). We use Java 1.5 on Mac OS X 10.4 in this tutorial, but the platform shouldn't matter. Get Java technology from Sun Microsystems or IBM® .





