Announcement: Liferay Faces 4.2.0-m2 Released

On September 26, 2014 Liferay released the 2nd Milestone of Liferay Faces 4.2.0:

Liferay Faces 4.2.0-m2 JSF 2.2 + Liferay Portal 6.2 Release Notes

All New Showcase

The Liferay Faces Showcase has is hosted at www.liferayfaces.org and features a suite of new Java-based JSF components, many of which utilize AlloyUI and can be used in either webapps or portlets.

Responsive JSF

  • Since AlloyUI relies on Twitter Bootstrap, bootstrap-responsive.min.css is automatically included as a @ResourceDependency
  • Developers can design responsive layouts using the alloy:row component
  • There is a "responsive" attribute (defaults to true) on alloy:inputDate and alloy:inputTime so that they use the native date/time pickers on mobile displays
  • The portal:navBar component is responsive as well, turning itself into a button with a popup menu for smaller (mobile) displays

Download Instructions

Since the 4.2.0-m2 release is not General Availability (GA), the JAR artifacts are *not* published at Maven Central. Instead, they are published at the new Liferay Previews Nexus Repository along with the demo portlets.

Maven Project Dependencies

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.liferay.faces</groupId>
    <artifactId>liferay-faces-alloy</artifactId>
    <version>4.2.0-m2</version>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.liferay.faces</groupId>
    <artifactId>liferay-faces-bridge-impl</artifactId>
    <version>4.2.0-m2</version>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.liferay.faces</groupId>
    <artifactId>liferay-faces-portal</artifactId>
    <version>4.2.0-m2</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>
<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>liferay-previews</id>
    <url>
      https://repository.liferay.com/nexus/content/repositories/liferay-previews
    </url>
  </repository>
</repositories>

Ivy Project Dependencies

<dependencies>
  <dependency org="com.liferay.faces" name="liferay-faces-alloy" rev="4.2.0-m2" />
  <dependency org="com.liferay.faces" name="liferay-faces-bridge-impl" rev="4.2.0-m2" />
  <dependency org="com.liferay.faces" name="liferay-faces-portal" rev="4.2.0-m2" />
</dependencies>
...
<resolvers>
  <ibiblio m2compatible="true" name="liferay-previews"
    root="https://repository.liferay.com/nexus/content/repositories/liferay-previews" />
</resolvers>

Version Scheme

Please refer to the Liferay Faces Version Scheme wiki article for a detailed explanation of the version numbering.

Stability

This 4.2.0-m2 release is a technology preview that is suitable for development purposes but should not be used in a production environment. It will not be supported under the Liferay EE subscription until it reaches GA (General Availability) status.

Support For JSF 2.2 and Liferay Portal 6.2

  • This release of Liferay Faces is compatible with JSF 2.2

  • If deploying portlets to Liferay Portal 6.2, then developers should read the new Migrating From Liferay Faces 3.1 to Liferay Faces 3.2/4.2 section in the Developer's Guide. Specifically, JSF portlets require the following option in the WEB-INF/liferay-portlet.xml descriptor: <requires-namespaced-parameters>false</requires-namespaced-parameters>

Tomcat 7 Only

Developed under JSR 344, JSF 2.2 is part of the larger Java EE 7 specification from the JCP. Even though Java EE 7 includes technologies like CDI 1.1 and Servlet 3.1, JSF 2.2 only depends on Java EE 6 technologies like CDI 1.0 and Servlet 3.0. This means that JSF 2.2 webapps and portlets can be deployed in Java EE 6 (Servlet 3.0) servlet containers such as Tomcat 7. However, Java EE 6 full-profile application servers such as GlassFish 3.2, JBoss 7.1, and WebLogic 12c bundle JSF 2.1 and cannot be upgraded to JSF 2.2. At the time of this writing, Liferay, Inc. has not released any Liferay Portal 6.1/6.2 bundles with Java EE 7 servers such as Tomcat 8, GlassFish 4.0 or JBoss/WildFly 8. Therefore this milestone has only been tested for compatibility with Liferay Portal 6.1/6.2 on Tomcat 7.
 

Roadmap

The Liferay Faces team is hard at work adding new components and new features so that we can achieve BETA status in our next release. Stay tuned!
 

Feedback Requested

If you find any problems with this release, please post a message in the Liferay Faces forums.

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