Hello,

I'm working on a web project which uses JSF 2.0, PrimeFaces and PrettyFaces as main frameworks / libraries. The pages have the following (common) structure: Header, Content, Footer.

Header: The Header always contains the same menu. This menu is a custom component, which generates a recursive html <ul><li> list containing <a href="url"> html links, this is all rendered with a custom renderer. The link looks like 'domain.com/website/datatable.xhtml?ref=2'. Where the ref=2 used to load the correct content from the database. I use prettyfaces to store this request value in a backingbean.

Question 1: Is it ok to render the <a href> links myself, or should I better add an HTMLCommandLink from my UIComponent and render that in the encodeBegin/End?

Question 2: I think passing variables like this is not really the JSF 2.0 style, how to do this in a better way?

Content: The content contains dynamic data. It can be a (primefaces) datatable, build with dynamic data from the database. It can also be a text page, also loaded from the database. Or a series of graphs. You got the point, it's dynamic. The content is based on the link pressed in the header menu. If the content is of type datatable, then I put the ref=2 variable to a DataTableBean (via prettyfaces), which then loads the correct datatable from the database. If the content is of type chart, I'll put it on the ChartBean.

Question 3: Is this a normal setup? Ideally I would like to update my content via Ajax.

I hope it's clear :)