JSF and PopUP

By default JSF has no support for PopUps, unless you are using any custom JSF component library like Tomahawk (http://myfaces.apache.org/tomahawk/index.html), it is tough to achieve pop ups in JSF.
Lets say we want to create a web page which shows a link and on click of that link, one popup should appear with details of the element clicked. This is a very standard requirement like on click of "username" the pop up window should display the details of the user. In JSF it becomes tough because onclick event we can fire a javascript but that is not in sync with the backend action bean.
There is however an easy solution for this problem. The solution is to do the followings
1. Create one controller and bind it to the request scope
2. On click, form a URL which will look like this "newpage.jsp?param1=val"
3. The controller should read the params passed in the URL and process accordingly, for example in this case, the param would be the name of the user and the controller should contact LDAP or backend database server to fetch details data.
The controller can get the details of the parameters passed along with the URL by using FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequestParameterValuesMap() - this will return the map whose key is the parameter name passed in the URL.

My Status update

wow just by looking at my blog, I am figuring out how much busy I was in last couple of months. Well, 2010 is here with lots of activity for myself. The first major change was breaking up with HP. It was a long relationship - around 7 years, found myself becoming very comfortable, so decided to leave and come to US as a consultant.
As a consultant, I am doing some pretty good work in last three month or so. I worked on JSF, worked on Webservices - Axis2 (and SwA).. its cool. I want to write about JSF 1.1 and PopUp, will post it as soon as I get some free time.