The rewrite filter (PrettyFaces) is one of the most commonly used filters. In fact, it's so common that we are actually briefly covering it here in the web applications course at Chalmers since a few years back. To use it, you first need the following dependencies added to your POM file;
<dependency>
<groupId>org.ocpsoft.rewrite</groupId>
<artifactId>rewrite-servlet</artifactId>
<version>3.4.2.Final</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.ocpsoft.rewrite</groupId>
<artifactId>rewrite-config-prettyfaces</artifactId>
<version>3.4.2.Final</version>
</dependency>
PrettyFaces fully uses JavaEE runtime annotations - so it should be available for use once you add it. Next, you define the configuration - by default it will look for a pretty-config.xml file inside your WEB-INF/ directory. A basic setup can look something like this;
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<pretty-config xmlns="http://ocpsoft.org/schema/rewrite-config-prettyfaces"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://ocpsoft.org/schema/rewrite-config-prettyfaces
http://ocpsoft.org/xml/ns/prettyfaces/rewrite-config-prettyfaces.xsd">
<url-mapping id="home">
<pattern value="/" />
<view-id value="/index.xhtml" />
</url-mapping>
<url-mapping id="view-authors">
<pattern value="/authors" />
<view-id value="/author/list.xhtml" />
</url-mapping>
<url-mapping id="delete-author">
<pattern value="/authors/delete/#{id}"/>
<view-id value="/author/delete.xhtml?id=#{id}" />
</url-mapping>
<url-mapping id="edit-author">
<pattern value="/authors/edit/#{id}"/>
<view-id value="/author/edit.xhtml?id=#{id}" />
</url-mapping>
</pretty-config>
In essence you can read the above as make the view-id accessible as specified in pattern. To read the id value you specify the following on your pages (just like you normally would);
<f:metadata>
<f:viewParam name="id" value="#{bean.id}" />
</f:metadata>
Since some time back, PrettyFaces also supports annotations - allowing you to skip the `pretty-config.xml" file and directly specify your alternate URL pattern on top of the backing bean class. Allowing you to do something like this directly in you backing bean;
@URLMapping(pattern = "/authors/edit/#{id}", viewId = "/author/edit.xhtml?id=#{id}")
You can find more information on these annotations here;
https://www.ocpsoft.org/prettyfaces/annotations-support-is-coming-to-prettyfaces-url-rewriting/
While PrettyFaces allows you to control the full structure of the URL (including parameters), if you only need to strip the extension, you can use the OmniFaces ExtensionlessURL filter (http://showcase.omnifaces.org/facesviews/ExtensionlessURLs) - which simply is controlled like this;
<context-param>
<param-name>org.omnifaces.FACES_VIEWS_SCAN_PATHS</param-name>
<param-value>/*.xhtml</param-value>
</context-param>
This would make views accesible directly without the xhtml extension. To add OmniFaces to your project, just specify the following in your POM;
<dependency>
<groupId>org.omnifaces</groupId>
<artifactId>omnifaces</artifactId>
<version>3.2</version>
</dependency>
I also like to mention that in the field (among implementations), it's not all that uncommon that applications roll their own solution and implement "prettification" on their own - this is especially common when applications need to "generate" their own URL based on some random ID. This can be done by implementing a custom filter that invokes forward() on the request dispatcher. This obviously allows you to take it even further and do pretty much whatever you want. Of course, you can really just use PrettyFaces - but I guess some people just like to go that extra step.
Sorry for the drawn out post, but I was unable to find a good, thorough coverage on this on the site - so I thought I might as well write one up.
