I occasionally create custom JavaServer Faces components. Just enough to sort of remember what the steps are, but not nearly frequently enough to quickly put a new component together. This article demonstrates the quick step approach to creating a new custom component in the old fashioned way (that means: it is not a Facelets template based or an ADF Faces 11g Declarative Component). Its primary purpose is to help me quickly retrace my steps. But perhaps it will benefit some of you as well.

The Shuffler component I will develop supports facets. It will render its facet children – one after the other. Which one is rendered first can be indicated through an attribute facetOrder (values normal, reverse and random), which is EL enabled. A shuffler-method-expression can optionally be set to provide the Shuffler with a shuffle-order-processor: the method is invoked with the list of facets to shuffle and will return it in the order in which to render the children.

The component can render with a shuffle icon that when pressed causes the children to be shuffled. The Shuffler component allows registration of Shuffle Event Listeners, custom listeners that are informed whenever the shuffle More >