JavaServer Faces

The UITabLabel Class

With the custom renderer out of the way, let’s see how to develop a custom component. The custom component needed for the tab labels is implemented as a class named UITabLabel:

package com.mycompany.jsf.component;

import java.util.Iterator;
import javax.faces.component.UICommand;
import javax.faces.component.UIComponent;
import javax.faces.el.MethodBinding;
import javax.faces.event.ActionEvent;
import javax.faces.event.ActionListener
import javax.faces.event.FacesEvent;

public class UITabLabel extends UICommand {

    public static final String COMPONENT_TYPE = "com.mycompany.TabLabel";
    public static final String COMPONENT_FAMILY = "javax.faces.Command";

    public UITabLabel( ) {
        super( );
        setRendererType("javax.faces.Link");
    }

    public String getFamily( ) {
        return COMPONENT_FAMILY;
    }

All JSF components must extend the abstract UIComponent class, either directly or indirectly by extending a subclass. A subclass with default implementations for all methods is called UIComponentBase, and all top-level standard components extend this class instead of UIComponent. The custom UITabLabel class extends the UICommand class because its behavior is the same as the standard command component with just a few twists.

The COMPONENT_TYPE and COMPONENT_FAMILY constants are not required, but they are defined by convention in all standard JSF component classes, so I do the same for the custom component. They hold the component type and component family identifiers for the component.

The ...