JBoss® Seam: Simplicity and Power Beyond Java™ EE

12. Bookmarkable Web Pages

One of the loudest criticisms of JSF (and other component-based web frameworks) is its reliance on HTTP POST requests. JSF uses HTTP POST to match user actions (e.g., button clicks) with UI event-handler methods on the server side (i.e., in Seam stateful session beans). It also uses hidden fields in the HTTP POST requests to keep track of the user’s conversational state.

In an HTTP POST request, the URL does not contain the complete query information about the request. It is impossible to bookmark a web page dynamically generated from an HTTP POST. However, in many web applications, it is highly desirable to have bookmarkable web pages (a.k.a. RESTful URLs—REST stands for Representational State Transfer). For instance, ...