We have developed this recipe with NetBeans 6.8, JSF 2.0, and GlassFish v3. The JSF 2.0 classes were obtained from the NetBeans JSF 2.0 bundled library.

Now, let's get into the subject, and let's say that the JSF 2.0 bookmarkability mechanism is based on two new tags, named h:link and h:button. These tags will generate a URL based on the specified navigation outcome.

OK, enough theory, let's see an example:

…
<h:link outcome="page2" value="HelloToYou">
<f:param name="helloparam" value="#{bean.hello}"/>
</h:link>
…

In the previous example, we assume no navigation rule, therefore the outcome attribute indicates a navigation to page2.xhtml (the FacesServlet is mapped to *.xhtml). The value attribute indicates text that will be rendered as a link in the page. The f:param will add a query parameter to the generated URL. The result of this component will be:

http://localhost:8080/ URLs_based_on_specified_navigation_outcome/faces/page2.xhtml?helloparam=Adrian

The Adrian value comes from a simple managed bean:

package beans;
import javax.enterprise.context.RequestScoped;
import javax.faces.bean.ManagedBean;
@ManagedBean
@RequestScoped
public class Bean {
private String hello = "Adrian";
public Bean() {
}
public String getHello() {
return hello;
}
public void setHello(String hello) {
this.hello = hello;
}
}

You can bookmark this page at any moment and conserve the URL. The h:button works in the same manner except that it renders a button instead of a link.

Before the user uses the component—clicks on the hyperlink—the current view ID and the specified outcome are used to find the target view ID. Afterwards, it is translated into a bookmarkable URL and used as the hyperlink's target. Note that this is true even if the user never activates the component.

The target view ID is placed in the attribute named outcome on the new bookmarkable component tags, h:link or/and h:button (those components inherit from a component class named UIOutcomeTarget). Notice that you are not targeting a view ID directly, but rather a navigation outcome, which may be interpreted as a view ID if the matching falls through to implicit navigation.

We consider that this is a good place and time to point out some methods of creating the query string parameters, therefore we present them in the order that they are processed:

The code bundled with this book, contains a complete example of this recipe. The project can be opened with NetBeans 6.8 and it is named: URLs_based_on_specified_navigation_outcome.