Creating custom JSF components

A custom component library contains new and modified JSF components that you can use in your Web applications and distribute the libraries to your development team.

Before you begin

Create a custom JSF component library.

About this task

To create and add a custom component to a custom component library.

Procedure

  1. Click File > New > Other > Web > Faces Custom Component. Click Next. The New Web Page wizard opens.
  2. In the File Name field, type a file name for your custom component. In the Template list, click Faces Custom Component. Then click Finish. The JSP opens.

    This JSP is a page fragment that wraps custom component tags within the <jsfc:component> tags:

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<%@page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>

<%@taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" prefix="f"%>
<%@taglib uri="http://www.ibm.com/jsf/customcomponent" prefix="jsfc"%>

<jsfc:component>
</jsfc:component>

    The custom component tag, <jsfc:component>, contains the other JSF components that you will add to your custom component.

  3. Define the attributes for the custom component tag.
  4. Add your custom component tags to the JSP. You can add the tags using different methods:
    • Type the tags into the Source view of Page Designer.
    • Drop an existing tag or group of tags from the Palette onto the page.
    • Drop the component from the Page Data View onto the page.
    Save the file. The JSF component, tag class, and associated configuration files are created in the component library project. The new JSF component class, custom tag class for each custom component page, faces-config.xml, and tag library definition (JLD) file is added to the tag library JAR file.
    Tip: A test page is automatically generated when you save the component. To test your component, right-click the test page in Enterprise Explorer and select Run As > Run on Server. Follow the instructions in the Run On Server wizard.

What to do next

Once you have added your custom component to your custom library, you can use your custom components to create page content. To add the custom components to the palette, refer to Creating a JSF Library Definition (JLD). To distribute the components to other users, refer to Distributing a component library.
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