A JSF application needs an XML descriptor file inside your WAR in addition to the web.xml descriptor file shown in Chapter 13, Working with Servlets and JSP. The faces-config.xml file must be put in the WEB-INF folder application as the web.xml. It manages the application according the main points of internationalization, navigation, and listener management. We will analyze these points further on in the chapter. Here's a basic sample of faces-config.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<faces-config xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_2_2.xsd" version="2.2">
   ...
</faces-config>

In this chapter, we will see the creation of a forum application calling EJB services provided by Rubia Forums. Rubia Forums is a complete open source JSF application representing a forum. In addition to the frontend tier, it provides REST and EJB implementations. This product, once called Jobs Forum and managed by the Jobs community, is now managed by Vige, an Italian open source community.