JSP or JSF

[CodeClimber]

Hi. Just teaching myself Spring so apologies for newbie question. When developing web apps using Spring (Spring MVC?), is it normal to use JSPs or JSF? In my experience, in the non-Spring Java world, there has been a gradual move away from JSPs to JSF over the last few years. However, I notice a lot of the Spring doco and forum posts refer to JSPs rather than JSF.

Is there a consensus in the Spring community if it is better to use one or the other if writing a web-app from scratch using the latest version of Spring?

[dr_pompeii]

Hello

JSF is a specification, you have some implementations like PrimeFaces, RichFaces etc and JSF is related with the JEE 6 specification. So if you want work with *pure* Oracle/Sun specification you would think in JSF/EJB etc

Spring MVC work closely with JSP. If you want integrate JSF (view) + Spring (for any reason) you should consider only
Spring Web Flow + JSF 2.0

Personally I work with pure Spring: Spring Core + Spring MVC + Spring MVC and others

Around the world, and keeping the idea that Java is wide, you would see developers working with only Oracle/Sun JEE6 specification and other with Spring. Of course Spring makes your JEE life easier.

HTH

[CodeClimber]

Hi Mauel. Thanks for the detailed reply. I guess when I was comparing JSP to JSF I really meant to compare JSP to Facelets / XHTML.

Following on from that, if I am using JSPs (+ Spring MVC etc.), are there UI and AJAX component libraries available to me to use (similar to PrimeFaces, IceFaces etc.)?

[dr_pompeii]

Hello

Thanks for the detailed reply

You're welcome

Something that I forgot to write is about that JSF is better than Struts, both handle in their own way the MVC pattern

Following on from that, if I am using JSPs (+ Spring MVC etc.), are there UI and AJAX component libraries available to me to use (similar to PrimeFaces, IceFaces etc.)?

I only know *pure* JSF for academic purposes, I have no experience with PrimeFaces nor IceFaces, but to include a rich UI and Ajax support in a JSP file I use jQuery, It is a powerful option available, consider Dojo too.

HTH

[venosov]

Hi, I'd like to share these differences about this subject.