How to make a redirection on page load in JSF 1.x

Question

I have a web-application where the users can be sent directly to some specific pages (such as a page where he can view or edit an item). To achieve that, we provide a specific url. These urls are located outside the current web-application (i.e. they can be present in another web-application, or in an email).

The url looks like http://myserver/my-app/forward.jsf?action=XXX¶m=YYY, where:

action represents the page where the user will be redirected. You can consider this as the from-outcome of any JSF action in navigation-case in faces-config.xml.
actionParam is a parameter for the previous action (generally an item ID)

So for example, I can have these kind of urls:

http://myserver/my-app/forward.jsf?action=viewItem&actionParam=1234
http://myserver/my-app/forward.jsf?action=editItem&actionParam=1234

Of course, I have a Java class (bean) that will check some security constraints (i.e. is the user allowed to see / edit the corresponding item?) and then redirect the user to the correct page (such as edit.xhtml, view.xhtml or access-denied.xhtml).

Current implementation

Currently, we have a basic way to accomplish the forward. When the user clicks on the link, the following XHTML page is called:

As you can see, I bind two components in my Java bean. They will be used to store the value of both action and actionParam request parameter (using FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequestParameterMap().get("actiontParam");). I also provide the doForward method that which will be called immediately when the page is rendered, which will redirect (again) the user to the real page. The method is:

public void doForward(ActionEvent evt) {
    FacesContext facesContext = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
    String redirect = // define the navigation rule that must be used in order to redirect the user to the adequate page...
    NavigationHandler myNav = facesContext.getApplication().getNavigationHandler();
    myNav.handleNavigation(facesContext, null, redirect);
}

This solution is working, but I have two problems with that:

I don't like the way it is implemented. I'm sure that I can have something simplier (using a Servlet?).
This solution is using Javascript, and I must not use Javascript (as this forward may be used by old Blackberry users, where the Javascript is not supported).

So my question is how to refactor this redirection / forward feature?

Technical information

Java 1.6, JSF 1.2, Facelets, Richfaces

user_11365529 · Answer

Assume that foo.jsp is your jsp file. and following code is the button that you want do redirect.

And now we'll check the method for directing in your java (service) class

 public String enter() {
            if (userName.equals("xyz") && password.equals("123")) {
                return "enter";
            } else {
                return null;
            }
        }

and now this is a part of faces-config.xml file


        'class_name'
        'package_name'
        request
    


    
                enter
                /foo.jsp

How to make a redirection on page load in JSF 1.x

5 Answers