JSF and SEO

Last Updated on Thursday, 26 May 2011 15:50 Thursday, 26 May 2011 15:43

Introduction

Url rewriting is not reserved to PHP solutions. JSF has now a library able to provide SEO features like :

URL Rewriting — Replace ugly URLs: “/faces/page.jsf” with pretty, SEO-friendly, human URLS: “/optimized/page/”; The client browser never sees your original URLs, even in the source-HTML
Dynamic view IDs — Now with dynamic view ID mapping for URLs (through El method expressions,) you can show different views based on run-time conditions, effectively de-coupling the URL from the JSF view.
Page-load actions — Call one or more action-methods, at one or more phases, before rendering a view.
Managed parameter parsing — HTTP parameters parsed from URLs are stored in managed beans, simply get a reference to your parameter bean for easy access from other Java classes.
Navigation by ID — Define your page IDs in one place, reference them easily in action-methods and components, using standard JSF navigation techniques.
Integrated validation — For URL and query-parameters, able to re-use existing JSF validator objects.
Easy to configure — Requires absolutely minimal configuration; may be enabled using XML or annotations.

Prettyfaces is that library.

PrettyFaces

PrettyFaces is an OpenSource extension for Servlet, Java EE, and JSF , which enables creation of bookmarkable, REST-ful, "pretty" URLs. PrettyFaces solves several problems elegantly, such as: custom URL-rewriting, page-load actions, seamless integration with JSF navigation and links, dynamic view-id assignment, managed parameter parsing, and configuration-free compatibility with other JSF frameworks.

Maven dependencies configuration

Include the following snippet in the <dependencies> section of your project's pom.xml-file:

Maven plugin configuration

<!-- For Servlet/Java EE and <a href="http://java-tutorial.ch/java-server-faces" title="JSF">JSF <img src="http://www.java-tutorial.ch//administrator/components/com_acesef/assets/images/icon-10-external.png"/></a> 2.0 -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.ocpsoft</groupId>
    <artifactId>prettyfaces-jsf2</artifactId>
    <version>3.2.0</version>
</dependency>

Tags: java, managed, prettyfaces, urls, dynamic