For the last month I've been digging into solutions on how to create a XHTML/WML application with JAVA technology. Since I've been working with JSF for about two years I naturally wanted to use this framework for the job.
However, after doing a lot of prototyping with loads of testing on various mobile devices and emulators I've figured out the following:
1. The only JSF WML renderkit I've found is the MyFaces one that can be accessed from this URL: http://www.ibiblio.org/maven2/myfaces/myfaces-wap/1.0.9/
It can easily be implemented by putting this into faces-config:
<application>
<default-render-kit-id>WML_BASIC</default-render-kit-id>
</application>
The implementation is not being actively worked on (As far as I know) and it is not compatible with the latest MyFaces release. Also I believe there is a lot of work involved if you need to have HTML and WML pages rendered in the same web application. I need this functionality for the app I'm working on at the moment.
In JSF1.2 this would be possible with the new f:view renderkit tag that allows you to specify which renderkit to use for each view. Unfortunately I'm guessing that this functionality won't work until MyFaces release a 1.2 ri and upgrade the 1.0.9 WAP renderkit to be compatible.
2. Rendering XHTML with jsf 1.1/myfaces 1.1.4 does not work perfectly as it does not create 100% valid XHTML. I think I read somewhere in a BLOG by Ed Burns that this would change for JSF 1.2 so that JSF rendered HTML would be 100% XHTML compatible. I've not been able to verify this via testing. If this is true it would mean a lot less headaches when developing XHTML mobile content with JSF.
Questions:
1. We need to support all mobile devices so the application needs to render both WML and XHTML. I'm now thinking of rendering the WML part of my application using a pure servlet implementation. The XHTML part of the app I'm hoping JSF1.2 will do without any problems. Have anybody else done this? Suggestions and comments are highly appreciated!
2. Does anybody know if someone is working on a WML renderkit for JSF that will be compatible with JSF1.2? Would anybody be interested in contributing to getting the myfaces renderkit compatible with jsf1.2?
3. Has anybody implemented a WML app using JSP and Servlets? It would be cool to share experiences on this matter.