Introduction

PrimeFaces has an impressive number of components that are usually suitable for all common and advanced use cases. It is almost impossible to cover all scenarios in just one book and discuss all solutions for this case or that. The key aspect of this chapter consists in giving users tips that can be applied quickly for often-raised questions.

In this chapter, we will go beyond the basics and introduce more interesting features of the PrimeFaces library. We will learn about RequestContext—a helpful utility that allows marking components as updatable targets at runtime, adding AJAX callback parameters, and more. We will also develop a couple of real-world samples such as, for example, blocking UI during AJAX calls, periodic polling, focus handling, controlling form submission, and targetable messages. Furthermore, after reading this chapter you should be aware of some pitfalls of menus within the layout units and nested panels.