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Cleaning up Deprecated Stuff

Namespace and Naming Changes

In Jakarta EE 8.0, we have accomplished the changes of the maven artifactId from javaee to jakarta.

In Jakarta EE 9.0, the main work is applying new jakarta namespace in the code level. Almost all packages use jakarta instead of javax in Java source codes, and XML namespace use jakarta.ee to replace jcp.org in the XML schema definition. But there is an exception, Faces 3.0 still use the legacy jcp.org in the Faceslet views.

In Faces 4.0, it introduces the shorter URN(Uniform Resource Name)s to replace the original URIs.

declaration Jakarta EE 8/9 URIs Jakarta EE 10 URNs
xmlns:faces http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf jakarta.faces
xmlns:ui http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/facelets jakarta.faces.facelets
xmlns:f http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/core jakarta.faces.core
xmlns:h http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/html jakarta.faces.html
xmlns:p http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/passthrough jakarta.faces.passthrough
xmlns:cc http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/composite jakarta.faces.composite
xmlns:myCompositeComponents http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/composite/components jakarta.faces.composite/components
xmlns:myComponents http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/component jakarta.faces.component
xmlns:c http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsp/jstl/core jakarta.tags.core
xmlns:fn http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsp/jstl/function jakarta.tags.functions

Additionally, all JSF related naming are updated to use Faces, including(a copy from BalusC's blog):

  • jsf.js JavaScript file was renamed to faces.js
  • window.jsf JavaScript global variable was renamed to window.faces
  • jsf/ClientSideSecretKey JNDI variable was renamed to faces/ClientSideSecretKey
  • jsf/FlashSecretKey JNDI variable was renamed to faces/FlashSecretKey
  • xmlns:jsf default XML namespace prefix for passthrough elements was renamed to xmlns:faces
  • ResourceHandler.JSF_SCRIPT_LIBRARY_NAME constant was renamed to FACES_SCRIPT_LIBRARY_NAME
  • ResourceHandler.JSF_SCRIPT_RESOURCE_NAME constant was renamed to FACES_SCRIPT_RESOURCE_NAME

The specification name is also updated to Jakarta Faces in Faces 4.0 which was named Jakarta Server Faces in Jakarta EE 8/9, and Java Server Faces(aka JSF) in Java EE 8 and previous versions.

In the post, I used word JSF for the legacy versions before 3.0.

Removal of JSP as View

JSP is a standalone specification for building Java web applications, it mainly acts as the view role in the traditional MVC frameworks. Nowadays there are still a lot of applications that use it to build web UIs.

JSP works as a view technology in the early JSF 1.x. Since JSF 2.0, Facelets becomes the default view engine.

In Faces 4.0, JSP is physically removed.

Better CDI Alignment

Since JSF 2.2, new CDI compatible scopes eg. FlowScope and ViewScope are added, CDI was suggested to replace the JSF built-in injection provider. In Faces 4.0, you have to use CDI specific ApplicationScoped, SessionScoped, RequestScoped annotations to replace the legacy ones in old JSF.

Removal of MethodBinding and ValueBinding

Faces 4.0 removes the legacy MethodBinding and ValueBinding API which will confuse developers when devloping components, and switch to use Jakarta EL as built-in expressing language engine.

Removal of Deprecated APIs

Some long-existed deprecated APIs are removed in Faces 4.0, including:

  • PreJsf2ExceptionHandlerFactory class was just completely removed as that never proved to be useful
  • The constant CURRENT_COMPONENT and CURRENT_COMPOSITE_COMPONENT was removed from UIComponent class, use new UIComponent.getCurrentComponent instead
  • StateManager was removed.
  • ResourceResolver was removed and replaced with ResourceHandler
Last update: 2023-11-26