Integrate JSF2 and Spring3 (with AOP)

Question

I am using Spring and JSF2 a lot and was wondering what the best way to integrate them is? Now i understand there are basically two ways to do this, but i have some problems with both:

a) Use normal @ManagedBean, and inject Spring-Services into that beans using @ManagedProperty: The problem is that i can't use Spring-AOP inside a @ManagedBean obviously, because it is not Spring-managed. I usually use an arround-aspect on every method annotated with my custom annotation @DatabaseOperation. Another example would be @Secured from Spring-Security and so on. I use a lot of AOP in my project and not beeing able to use them on "the top level" is really limiting for me.

b) Use SpringBeanFacesELResolver to make everything managed by Spring. On the pro side is that AOP works like a charm, but the cons are big too:

1. No ViewScope. I am not sure if i can trust custom view scope implementations like this https://github.com/michail-nikolaev/primefaces-spring-scopes on productive systems?
2. Serialization is not possible. It's already pretty complicated, but once i use AOP i can't get it to work because org.springframework.aop.aspectj.AspectJPointcutAdvisor is not Serializable

So my question is: How do you overcome this issues? How do YOU integrate JSF2 and Spring3.x? I have been using possibility b) mostly, but on my next project i need session replication..

Any further suggestions?

Answer 1

The main integration pain point of the two frameworks is that JSF is usually used in a stateful way. to make the integration the most seamless, you would have to let Spring handle the statefulness and page navigations aspects himself instead of JSF, as well as bean creation and scoping.

The second important integration point is at the level of the view expression language. We want to be able to access spring beans while building the view, which means the managed bean layer is no longer needed.

The best integration available for the two frameworks is provided by introducing Spring webflow, see here for further details. With SWF, JSF no longer manages beans itself, this is done by Spring. JSF does not manage page navigation anymore, this handled in the SWF flow definition.

Also the statefulness is handled by SWF. The flow definition XML file replaces large parts of the faces-config.xml for view navigation, transition actions, bean definition, etc.

Using the SWF JSF integration means that your faces-config.xml is mostly empty. Expression language accessing directly spring beans can be used while building the view, and a view scope is available.

If you want to keep a page isolated from the rest of the application, youcan create a flow with a single view state and self-transitions. An advantage of SWF is that it prevents duplicate form submissions via a POST-REDIRECT-GET mechanism that works transparently out of the box.