subu ananthram wrote:
I could normally do http://blablabla.com/app?action=doStuff and it would trigger doStuff method
No you wouldn't. That behavior is something that a special
Struts action processor does, and in fact, I stopped using Struts before it even became available. I think it came in with Struts 1.2. One reason I don't do Struts anymore was because of awkward constructs like that.
JSF is based on presenting a View with a Form in it and posting back the Form data, repeating until the action process indicated that a different View was needed. Handling raw GET/POST requests isn't what JSF is all about. However, you can mix servlets, raw JSPs and even Struts actions with JSF if you need to, and they would process POST requests in the normal way.
There are also 2 alternatives within JSF. One is to get the HttpRequest object from the internal JSF context and extract the data by brute force. I don't really recommend this, as it detracts from the portability and testability of the JSF backing beans. Another is to use the PrettyFaces add-on for JSF, but I think that that only works on GET requests.
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.