16.11 Registering a Custom Component

In addition to registering custom renderers (as explained in the preceding section), you also must register the custom components that are usually associated with the custom renderers. You use either a @FacesComponent annotation, as described in Creating Custom Component Classes, or the component element of the application configuration resource file.

Here is a hypothetical component element from the application configuration resource file that registers AreaComponent:

<component>
    <component-type>DemoArea</component-type>
    <component-class>
        dukesbookstore.components.AreaComponent
    </component-class>
    <property>
        <property-name>alt</property-name>
        <property-class>java.lang.String</property-class>
    </property>
    <property>
        <property-name>coords</property-name>
        <property-class>java.lang.String</property-class>
    </property>
    <property>
        <property-name>shape</property-name>
        <property-class>java.lang.String</property-class>
    </property>
</component>

Attributes specified in a component tag override any settings in the @FacesComponent annotation.

The component-type element indicates the name under which the component should be registered. Other objects referring to this component use this name. For example, the component-type element in the configuration for AreaComponent defines a value of DemoArea, which matches the value returned by the AreaTag class's getComponentType method.

The component-class element indicates the fully qualified class name of the component. The property elements specify the component properties and their types.

If the custom component can include facets, you can configure the facets in the component configuration using facet elements, which are allowed after the component-class elements. See Registering a Custom Renderer with a Render Kit for further details on configuring facets.