JSF 2 on JBoss AS 5.1.0

I was confronted with a requirement to run JSF 2 on JBoss Application Server 5.1.0 on Friday. As you may know, JSF 2.0 will run on Java EE 5 application servers, but not with all the bells and whistles that we have come to expect with Java EE 6.

Requirements

• JBoss Application Server 5.1.0 GA
• JSF 2.0.9

Instructions

1. Install JBoss Application Server.
2. Make sure that the server is not running.
3. Go to the <jboss_home>/server/default/deploy/jbossweb.sar/jsf-libsdirectory.
4. move the jsf-api.jar and jsf-impl.jar to a safe location. We will be replacing it with the javax.faces.jar from the JSF 2.0.9.zip distribution.
   Note: the javax.faces and com.sun.faces files are combined in one jar now. The Mojarra Reference Implementation is in a single jar now.
5. Go to the <jboss_home>/server/default/deployers/jbossweb.deployer directory.
6. Open the web.xml in a text editor and comment out the following lines:
   
7. Start the application server and check the logs. You should see something like the following:

   14:23:30,058 INFO [TomcatDeployment] deploy, ctxPath=/admin-console
   14:23:30,257 INFO [config] Initializing Mojarra 2.0.9 (SNAPSHOT 20120202) for context '/admin-console'
   14:23:45,013 INFO [application] JSF1048: PostConstruct/PreDestroy annotations present. ManagedBeans
   methods marked with these annotations will have said annotations processed.

Summary

You should be able to install and use JSF 2 with Java EE 5 Application servers like JBoss AS 5.1.0 without issues by simply updating the required JSF libraries.