ZK Spreadsheet Essentials/Using Spreadsheet in JSF/Get Spreadsheet Running Quickly in JSF

Available in ZK Spreadsheet EE only

Download ZSS JSF Example Project

If you want to run ZK spreadsheet JSF demo in your local site, just [http:// download the example project WAR file] and deploy to your application server.

Create and Run a JSF Project

The following sections tell you how to prepare an environment for working with Spreadsheet in JSF.

Prerequisites

Before developing a web application with Spreadsheet, you should prepare the following softwares:

• Install JDK 1.5 or above
• Install an application server
  • You can install any JavaEE application server you like. If you don't have one, Tomcat is a good choice.
• Install a development tool.
  • In this book, we will use Eclipse as the default IDE to explain related setup.

Prepare a Project

To develop a web application in Eclipse, you could use a dynamic web project or a maven project. We will describe steps to create these two kind of project respectively.

Steps to Prepare an Eclipse Dynamic Web Project

1. Create a dynamic web project
2. Install JSF
   1. Download JSF Reference Implementation, and file name might be javax.faces-2.1.24.jar.
   2. Put the JAR file to /WEB-INF/lib in your web project.
3. Install Spreadsheet library
   1. Download ZK Spreadsheet component (binary). Choose "Free Evaluation Downloads" from product page or licensed EE from premium download.

   2. Extract the zip and copy those JAR files under /dist/lib and /dist/lib/ext to /WEB-INF/lib of your web project's folder.

      Make sure zssjsf.jar existed in /WEB-INF/lib.

4. Set up web.xml
   1. Please refer to Sample of web.xml and Sample of web.xml for Servlet 2.3 (For some web container which support Servlet 2.3 only (e.g. Tomcat 4.x) to setup web.xml for ZK.
   2. Add servlet mapping for JSF:

<!-- JSF mapping -->
	<servlet>
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
		<servlet-class>javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet</servlet-class>
		<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
	</servlet>
 
	<!-- Map these files with JSF -->
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>/faces/*</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>*.jsf</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>*.faces</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>*.xhtml</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>

Steps to Prepare a Maven Project

1. Create a Maven project.

You should set packaging to war.

We recommend you to create a project from an archetype, then you can skip step 3.

2. Setup Maven dependency.

First, you should setup zk maven repository. Notice that different edition has a different repository, and licensed products even require authentication.

Because this feature is only available in EE, you should add following dependencies:

		<!-- JSF -->
		<dependency>
			<groupId>com.sun.faces</groupId>
			<artifactId>jsf-api</artifactId>
			<version>${jsf-api.version}</version>
			<scope>compile</scope>
		</dependency> 
		<dependency>
			<groupId>com.sun.faces</groupId>
			<artifactId>jsf-impl</artifactId>
			<version>${jsf-api.version}</version>
			<scope>compile</scope>
		</dependency>

		<!-- ZK -->
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.zkoss.zk</groupId>
			<artifactId>zkmax</artifactId>
			<version>${zk.version}</version>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.zkoss.zss</groupId>
			<artifactId>zssex</artifactId>
			<version>${zss.version}</version>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.zkoss.zss</groupId>
			<artifactId>zssjsf</artifactId>
			<version>${zss.version}</version>
		</dependency>

• If ${zss.version} is 3.0.0 or above, ${zk.version} should be 6.5.2.

You can reference the pom.xml in our example project to verify your own pom.xml.

3. Set up web.xml

1. Please refer to Sample of web.xml and Sample of web.xml for Servlet 2.3 (For some web container which support Servlet 2.3 only (e.g. Tomcat 4.x) to setup web.xml for ZK.

2. Add servlet mapping for JSF:

<!-- JSF mapping -->
	<servlet>
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
		<servlet-class>javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet</servlet-class>
		<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
	</servlet>
 
	<!-- Map these files with JSF -->
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>/faces/*</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>*.jsf</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>*.faces</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>*.xhtml</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>

Verify Your Project

After completing above steps, preparation for working with Spreadsheet and JSP is done. You can use a simple page to verify your preparation. Steps are as follows:

1. Create a simple Excel file or use the sample file in our example project. Put the file under your web application's root folder.
2. Create index.xhtml with content below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
    xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
    xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
    xmlns:zssjsf="http://www.zkoss.org/jsf/zss">
<h:head>
	<title>My First ZK Spreadsheet JSF application</title>
	<zssjsf:head/>
</h:head>
<h:body>
	<zssjsf:spreadsheet id="myzss" src="/WEB-INF/hellozss.xlsx" width="100%" height="100%" 
	maxVisibleRows="200" maxVisibleColumns="40">
	</zssjsf:spreadsheet>
</h:body>
</html>

• Line 7: Declare a taglib before using Spreadsheet JSP tag is necessary.
• Line 10: The head tag generates ZK required JS and CSS.
• Line 13: Use spreadsheet JSP tag with prefix you specified previously.

Now, deploy the project to your application server and visit index.xhtml to see if you can see the Spreadsheet.