Chapter 5. Developing the Business Logic and Setting Up Authentication

The best way to learn a new technology is to use it. In this book, I guide you through the development of an application with a JSF-based user interface. Along the way, we look at all the fundamental JSF concepts and use most of the JSF components. As we progress through the chapters, we'll build the application in stages, starting with a simple but functional version and then adding pieces to make it easier to maintain and make it look nicer. In this chapter, we'll walk through the layout and functionality of the final version of the application.

All versions of the application use the same business logic classes. This is a nice illustration of the separation of concerns supported by JSF: the business logic stays the same even when the user interface goes through significant changes. We look at all the business logic classes in this chapter. In the following chapters, we'll develop additional classes that make it easy to tie JSF components to these business logic classes.

The sample application relies on information about who the user is and adapts the functionality based on this information. In the last part of this chapter, we therefore look at how to configure the web container to handle identification of the user.