[PJUG Javamail] Consumer Based Web Development

Fri Jan 8 14:39:38 EST 2010

I would love to move to GlassFish, but we are an IBM i (AS/400) consulting
firm and I'm not sure how to get it running. I think we can through an
environment called PASE (it's an AIX style environment), but I'm not too
familiar with how all that works.

Oh brilliant. I didn't realize you parametrize JSF like that. I was,
wrongly, under the assumption that it HAD to be POST because of the life
cycle. So if that's the case I don't we have any problems at all.

Thanks a bunch Ken!
--
James R. Perkins
http://twitter.com/the_jamezp

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 11:29, Ken Paulsen <Ken.Paulsen at sun.com> wrote:

>
> Ok, I see why you are where you are. :)  If your boss is open to GlassFish
> in the future, it would save you tons of $$ and give you a better
> environment to work with.... but I suspect that's not going to happen in
> time for this project.  ;)
>
> *If* you still decide to go with JSF, my suggestion for the drill-down case
> you mentioned (so Google indexes your page) would be as follows:
>
> 1) When rendering your table, write the links out via static text (not a
> JSF button / link), for example:
>
>     <h:outputText escape="false" value="#{bean.linkHTML}" />
>
>     public String getLinkHTML() {
>        return "<a href='/.../nextPage.jsf?prodId=" + productId +
> "'>Product</a>";
>     }
>
> 2) When you load the product from the database, get the "prodId" query
> string parameter to see which record to load.
>
> This would allow indexing to work correctly and allow you to still use JSF.
>
> Good luck!
>
> Ken
>
>
>
> James Perkins wrote:
>
> Great comments Ken thanks!
>
> Yes, the POST is going to be the biggest challenge. Having to think it
> terms of how a search engine indexes is really hurting my brain :-). I'm so
> used to just developing an application that has no need to care. We will
> have some kind of category type drill down which probably would require JSF
> links so that is my main concern.
>
> I'm not really to keen on creating static pages myself. It was the only
> other thought I had at this point. I'm still researching some so we'll see
> what happens.
>
> We can move to a Java EE 5 compliant server, but our client isn't on one
> currently. The company I work for is an IBM business partner so we use
> WebSphere Application Server. I know WAS 7.0 is Java EE 5 compliant, but my
> boss didn't want to have to install it if we could get it running on WAS 6.1
> since we already have a B2B app working on it.
>
> Again thanks for your expertise here.
>
> --
> James R. Perkins
> http://twitter.com/the_jamezp
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 10:55, Ken Paulsen <Ken.Paulsen at sun.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> James Perkins wrote:
>>
>> I'm getting ready to start the process of creating a consumer based web
>> site. This is really the first time I've had to create a consumer based
>> site. My original thought was I would JSF/Facelets to create the site, but
>> got to thinking this might not work out so well as I need search engines to
>> be able to index it.
>>
>>  Depends on how you do your navigation.  If you use POSTS for all your
>> navigation (JSF makes this easy), then yes -- you'll likely have problems
>> getting Google to index your site.  However, JSF can behave like many other
>> frameworks which don't provide "navigation handler" type features, and you
>> can simply do:
>>
>>     <a href="nextpage.jsf">Next Page</a>
>>
>> This will index fine with Google.  Used this way it's no different (nor is
>> it any more helpful) than many of the other UI frameworks.
>>
>> The difficult areas would be if you were expecting a generated table of
>> links / buttons AND you want them indexed by google... then you'd want JSF
>> to generate them and then you're back to the POST or URLs which contain view
>> state which google won't handle well.  You'd have to do extra work to make
>> reproducible GET links in your table...
>>
>>  I've created web applications before, but they have always been internal
>> applications or applications that required a user to log in and have an
>> account.
>>
>> Doing some reading on SEO I'm seeing now that an entire JSF based site
>> might not be the best approach. The main problem being you can't really
>> bookmark JSF pages and links are mostly created using JavaScript which the
>> spiders can't crawl.
>>
>>  I think the POST is mostly the issue.  Although some implementations of
>> links/buttons do use JS that may also cause problems.  It's very easy to get
>> around the JS-based components.
>>
>> My question is have others run into this? Are people really still creating
>> static pages for stuff like this? Do any of you have suggestions on where to
>> begin or possibly a framework that would work better than or with JSF? I've
>> heard of PrettyFaces, but I think you have to be on a Java EE 5 compliant
>> server which to start we will not be running.
>>
>>  There is also RESTFaces and I think Seam has something and a couple
>> others.  I'm not sure which is best, or if any are worth using (I haven't
>> had this requirement either).  However, in the next version of JSF2 there
>> will most likely be a standardized approach for REST URLs which should
>> address most if not all of these issues.
>>
>> I've also considered creating a library to generate static pages based on
>> templates. That way each time a new item or category is entered into the
>> database a new page is not having to manually created and/or updated.
>>
>>  Yes that could be done too... although it would probably be just as easy
>> to design your site to only use GET URLs and create custom components and/or
>> use PrettyFaces (if it helps) for ensuring all URLs are generated the way
>> you want them.  Generating pages gives you the overhead of manipulating
>> files in your web tier and keeping it in-sync with your DB when content is
>> removed or updated -- could be a pain.
>>
>> People's other suggestions might be worth exploring too... but there are a
>> lot of benefits of JSF (this area is obviously not one of them).  Also, you
>> said you would not be using a Java EE 5 server... does this mean JSF 2 is
>> out of the question?  I strongly recommend JSF 2 over previous versions of
>> JSF.  Is this b/c of size?  Performance?  Hardware is incompatible?  Unless
>> your hardware isn't able to run the software, I would look seriously at Java
>> EE 6 -- it's just better.  (If you hardware can't run modern software --
>> then you have bigger issues ;-) .)
>>
>> Anyway, good luck whatever you decide!
>>
>> Ken
>>
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>> --
>> James R. Perkins
>> http://twitter.com/the_jamezp
>>
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