20. Enabling AJAX for Existing Components

In the previous chapter, we showed how easy it is to use prepackaged AJAX JSF components. However, developing those components is not a trivial exercise; it requires not only JavaScript/AJAX skills, but also a deep knowledge of how JSF works. In most cases, it is not cost-effective to write your own AJAX JSF components unless you plan to reuse them extensively. Most developers limit themselves to the components third-party vendors already offer.

However, what if the existing components do not do exactly what you want? What if the available components are simply too expensive? Such situations occur often in real-world enterprise applications. We need an AJAX solution that is not only easy to use, but also flexible enough to address different customization requirements. In this chapter, we introduce Ajax4jsf, which provides flexible and customizable AJAX support for JSF components. This is the second AJAX approach, as discussed at the beginning of Chapter 19.