This weekend, when my wife took her naps, I did some JSF 2.0 stuff…mostly getting a platform up and running on my work laptop that would allow me to write some JSF 2.0 code and perhaps have something to show y’all.
I have done this setup before on other machines, but I tried some different things.
I recommend the following download: http://netbeans.org/downloads/ (pick the “Java EE” download).
If you do this you get the netbeans IDE, and it will also install (optionally…you have to select a checkbox to install it) glassfish server 3.x. This version of Glassfish is Java EE 6 certified. And this version of Netbeans is integrated pretty well with Glassfish, even with regard to JSF 2.0.
If I do examples I will do it with these two. So if you want to reproduce whatever I will be able to give you specific advice.
I have used this combination of IDE and web server before for JSF 2.0, and it was recommended by the Burns and Schalk JSF 2.0 book that I read.
That said…I DID find a really good JSF 2.0 tutorial: http://www.coreservlets.com/JSF-Tutorial/jsf2/
This tutorial seems to have been put together really recently. They use eclipse Helios and Tomcat 7. I think this combination would be pretty easy to get started on as well, as Eclipse appears to have some decent support for Tomcat. However I would not recommend Eclipse/Glassfish combination, because the latest version of Eclipse’s Glassfish server adapter seems to have a bug or two…at any rate: figuring this particular problem is really not my top priority right this second, so I did not pursue this problem to the ends of the earth…just partway around the earth :-)
