Registering ICEfaces Servlets

Registering ICEfaces Servlets

As an extension to JSF, ICEfaces provides its own version of the FacesServlet (PersistentFacesServlet) as well as an additional Servlet (BlockingServlet) for handling asynchronous updates. We register these Servlets in the deployment descriptor file (web.xml) by adding the following entries:
<servlet>
 
		<servlet-name>Persistent Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
 
		<servlet-class>
 
				com.icesoft.faces.webapp.xmlhttp.PersistentFacesServlet
 
		</servlet-class>
 
		<load-on-startup> 1 </load-on-startup>
 
</servlet>
 

 
<servlet>
 
		<servlet-name>Blocking Servlet</servlet-name>
 
		<servlet-class>com.icesoft.faces.webapp.xmlhttp.BlockingServlet</servlet-class>
 
		<load-on-startup> 1 </load-on-startup>
 
</servlet>
 
We also need to add new Servlet mappings. Since we have a new file extension, we map FacesServlet to .jspx and PersistentFacesServlet to .iface. With this strategy, we can have a single page and run it in either plain JSF mode or with ICEfaces by simply changing the extension in the URL.
<servlet-mapping>
 
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
 
		<url-pattern>*.jspx</url-pattern>
 
</servlet-mapping>
 

 
<servlet-mapping>
 
		<servlet-name>Persistent Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
 
		<url-pattern>*.iface</url-pattern>
 
</servlet-mapping>
 
We also need to add a couple of mappings for ICEfaces' internal use.
<servlet-mapping>
 
		<servlet-name>Persistent Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
 
		<url-pattern>/xmlhttp/*</url-pattern>
 
</servlet-mapping>
 

 
<servlet-mapping>
 
		<servlet-name>Blocking Servlet</servlet-name>
 
		<url-pattern>/block/*</url-pattern>
 
</servlet-mapping>  
 
To support ICEfaces running under MyFaces, we need to add an additional context parameter to tell MyFaces to use .iface as the default suffix so that requests are properly directed to ICEfaces' PersistentFacesServlet.
<context-param>
 
		<param-name>javax.faces.DEFAULT_SUFFIX</param-name>
 
		<param-value>.iface</param-value>
 
</context-param>
 