Appendix A. The JSF Life Cycle
The initial and postback requests in JSF go through a JSF life cycle. When an initial request is processed, it only executes the Restore View and Render Response phases, because there is no user input or actions to process. On the other hand, when the life cycle handles a postback request, it executes all of the phases.
Moreover, JSF supports AJAX requests. An AJAX request consists of two parts: partial processing (the execute attribute) and partial rendering (the render attribute).
In the following diagram, you can have a look at the different phases of the JSF life cycle:
The symbols from the preceding diagram I, P, E, and R stand for:
- I: This is the phase executed for the initial request
- P: This is the phase executed for the postback request
- E: This is the phase executed at partial processing
- R: This is the phase executed at partial rendering
