The Faces Flows programmatic interface

The Faces Flows are powered by CDI. It is possible to write programmatic flows by declaring a POJO that produces a Faces Flow. In order to generate a flow dynamically, we must annotate a bean as a CDI producer and generate a flow instance.

Here is a basic SimpleFlowFactory class that supplies a Faces Flow:

import javax.faces.flow.builder.*;

public class SimpleFlowFactory implements Serializable {
  @Inject DocumentIdGenerator generator;

  @Produces @FlowDefinition
  public Flow createFlow( 
    @FlowBuilderParameter FlowBuilder flowBuilder)
  {
    final String documentId = generator.generate();
    flowBuilder.id(documentId, "simpleFlow");
    flowBuilder.viewNode("simpleFlow", 
      "/simpleFlow/simpleFlow.xhtml")
      .markAsStartNode();
    return flowBuilder.getFlow();
  }
}

We will annotate the createFlow() method as a CDI producer with the special qualifier, @FlowDefinition. We will also supply this method with...