JSF redirect to other page

Question

I have three XHTML pages;

1. index.xhtml
2. page_1.xhtml
3. page_2.xhtml

In the index.xhtml page, I have a commandButton which sends the user to page_1.xhtml. All this is done in the navigation rule in faces-config.xml.

How would I redirect the user to page_2.xhtml from the index.xhtml using another commandButton assuming that both commandButtons' actions are linked to a backing Java class?

Answer 1

Just bind the buttons to different action methods which each return a different outcome.

<h:commandButton value="Go to page 1" action="#{bean.goToPage1}" />
<h:commandButton value="Go to page 2" action="#{bean.goToPage2}" />

with

public String goToPage1() {
    // ...
    return "page_1";
}

public String goToPage2() {
    // ...
    return "page_2";
}

Navigation cases are not necessary. JSF 2.0 supports implicit navigation. The navigation outcome can just be the path/filename of the desired target view. The file extension in the outcome is optional.

If you don't necessarily need to perform any business action on navigation, or you can do it in the (post)constructor of the backing bean of the target page instead, then you can also just put the outcome value in the action directly.

<h:commandButton value="Go to page 1" action="page_1" />
<h:commandButton value="Go to page 2" action="page_2" />

A <h:commandButton> will however not perform a redirect, but a forward. The enduser won't see the URL being changed in the browser address bar. The target page isn't bookmarkable. If you can, I'd suggest to use <h:button> instead.

<h:button value="Go to page 1" outcome="page_1" />
<h:button value="Go to page 2" outcome="page_2" />

Or if you really need to invoke a business action, but would like to perform a real redirect, then append faces-redirect=true as query string to the outcome value.

public String goToPage1() {
    // ...
    return "page_1?faces-redirect=true";
}

public String goToPage2() {
    // ...
    return "page_2?faces-redirect=true";
}

See also:

• How to navigate in JSF? How to make URL reflect current page (and not previous one)
• When should I use h:outputLink instead of h:commandLink?