Creating a NetBeans Maven JSF project

After launching NetBeans, open the File menu and select New Project from the available project types. Locate and select Maven. A list of Maven archetypes (project templates) is available. Select Web Application, as shown in the following screenshot:

Click on Next and the following screenshot appears:

Project Name is set to PFThemes.

Project Location is generated automatically and it does not need to be changed.

The following Maven properties are listed:

Now that we have set the name and location of the project, click on Next. This leads us to the Settings dialog box. This is where we set the application server and Java Enterprise Edition (EE) version that we are going to use for the project, as shown in the following screenshot:

I chose GlassFish because it is the Java EE reference implementation. I selected GlassFish Server 4.0 because this is the current release version of GlassFish and the nightly builds are available to me.

Once we have set the project settings, we can finish creating it. NetBeans presents us with a Project view containing our newly created project. If it hasn't opened a Project view, open the Windows menu and select Projects. You can also open a Files and a Services view. This allows us to check the files as they are built into the project, and through the Services view we can control things such as the GlassFish server, as well as other services such as database connections.

Now that we have successfully created the project, we have to change the project properties so that it adds the JSF framework to it.

Select the project and right-click on it. This opens a context menu, which allows us to perform different tasks and control various aspects of the project itself. We are interested in the one at the bottom, Properties. We click on it to open the Project Properties dialog box and select the Frameworks option, as shown in the following screenshot:

By clicking on the Add… button to the right, we can select a framework from a number of choices. We want JSF, so we select it and click on OK, as follows:

We return to the Project Properties | Frameworks dialog box, which looks like this:

The three tabs, Libraries, Configuration, and Components, are used to display and/or change the configuration of the JSF framework for our project. Libraries cannot be altered, but it shows that we are using Java EE 7 JSF version 2.2. I also changed the configuration as follows:

The JSF Servlet URL Pattern field has been changed to *.xhtml from the default one because it makes the linking of JSF pages easier. However, this is a purely personal preference and it is not something that you need to do.

Once you have set up the JSF framework to your satisfaction, click on OK, and the changes will be applied to our project.