JBoss 4.2.0.GA comes with JavaServer Faces (JSF) 1.2 - a newer JSF version than JBoss 4.0.5.GA. They chose the SUN implementation. (I think that MyFaces will really soon be obsolete.) This upgrade requires some changes in applications using JSF (for example the applications that are Seam based). Here is what I have done to make it work, including some steps from Michael Yuan's blog post.

application.xml

In your application.xml you need to remove the following libraries:

<module>
   <java>el-api.jar</java>
</module>
<module>
   <java>el-ri.jar</java>
</module>

You also need to add the following:

<module>
   <java>commons-collections-3.1.jar</java>
</module>

Make sure that commons-collections-3.1.jar is at the root of your EAR. This is required by Ajax4jsf, because JBoss 4.2.0.GA is provided with a version of Commons Collections that does not seem to work with Ajax4jsf.

Facelets view

It seems that JBoss Seam and Facelets in conjunction with JBoss 4.2.0.GA delivers your content with MIME type xhtml+xml. In order to fix this problem you have to add the following in your Facelets template:

<f:view contentType="text/html">
....
</f:view}

This has to come just after the html tag.

faces-config.xml

It is advisable to use the new SEAM EL resolver - in faces-config.xml use the following:

<application>
   <el-resolver>org.jboss.seam.jsf.SeamELResolver</el-resolver>
   <message-bundle>messages</message-bundle>
</application>

Note that it seems to work without changing the resolver.

If you choose to use the new EL-resolver don't forget to change your faces-config.xml to use the new 1.2 JSF schema:

<faces-config version="1.2"
   xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
   http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_1_2.xsd">

web.xml

Last but not least, you need to remove the following from your web.xml:

<listener>
   <listener-class>org.apache.myfaces.webapp.StartupServletContextListener</listener-class>
</listener>

This is because JSF 1.2 doesn't need a start-up context (and this one was MyFaces-based anyway).

Happy coding with JBoss 4.2.0.GA.

Nicolas Leroux is an EJB Hacker at Lunatech Research.

Please send comments on this article to editorial@lunatech.com.