Time for action – installing and configuring PrimeFaces

Perform the following steps to install and configure PrimeFaces to your web application:

1. Configure JSF FacesServlet in web.xml:

   <servlet>
     <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
     <servlet-class>javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet</servlet-class>
     <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
   </servlet>
   <servlet-mapping>
     <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
     <url-pattern>*.jsf</url-pattern>
   </servlet-mapping>

   Tip

   Downloading the example code

   You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.

2. If you are not using Maven, then you can download PrimeFaces-4.0.jar from http://www.primefaces.org/downloads.html and add it to classpath.
3. If you are using Maven, then add PrimeFaces maven repository to the repository list, and add PrimeFaces-4.0 dependency in pom.xml.

   <repository>
     <id>prime-repo</id>
     <name>Prime Repo</name>
     <url>http://repository.primefaces.org</url>
   </repository>
   
   <dependency>
     <groupId>org.primefaces</groupId>
     <artifactId>primefaces</artifactId>
     <version>4.0</version>
   </dependency>
   
   <dependency>
     <groupId>com.sun.faces</groupId>
     <artifactId>jsf-api</artifactId>
     <version>2.2.3</version>
   </dependency>
   
   <dependency>
     <groupId>com.sun.faces</groupId>
     <artifactId>jsf-impl</artifactId>
     <version>2.2.3</version>
   </dependency>

What just happened?

We have configured PrimeFaces repository and primefaces-4.0.jar dependency in our maven pom.xml, so that the PrimeFaces library is available to the web application classpath. We have configured FacesServlet and mapped to the URL pattern *.jsf, other popular URL patterns used are /faces/*, *.faces, and *.xhtml.

Tip

The PrimeFaces libraries from 4.0 version will be available in Maven Central, so you need not configure the PrimeFaces repository. But if you want to use snapshot versions, you need to configure the PrimeFaces repository in pom.xml.