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.

About this tutorial

This tutorial introduces you to the Spring Framework, a large (and very complete) Web application framework that you can incorporate with your JSF application. You'll make use of Spring to continue developing the front end for the signup pages of our developer forum example application.

About this series

This is the final tutorial of a five-part series about building Apache Geronimo applications using JSF. The tutorials in the series include:

• 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 showed 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 demonstrated 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 taught 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.

System requirements

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.
• Spring Framework, a powerful application framework that can be integrated with existing Web applications.
• Eclipse, the extensible open source IDE that supports a wide range of languages and platforms.
• Eclipse Web Tools Platform, 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). I'll be using Java 1.5 on Mac OS X 10.4, but it shouldn't make much of a difference.

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Table of contents

• Before you start
• Getting ready
• Reviewing the MyFaces JSF implementation of devSignup
• Adding Spring MVC to devSignup
• Summary
• Downloads
• Resources
• About the author

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