Differences between action and actionListener

Question

What is the difference between action and actionListener, and when should I use action versus actionListener?

Answer 1

TL;DR:

The ActionListeners (there can be multiple) execute in the order they were registered BEFORE the action

Long Answer:

A business action typically invokes an EJB service and if necessary also sets the final result and/or navigates to a different view if that is not what you are doing an actionListener is more appropriate i.e. for when the user interacts with the components, such as h:commandButton or h:link they can be handled by passing the name of the managed bean method in actionListener attribute of a UI Component or to implement an ActionListener interface and pass the implementation class name to actionListener attribute of a UI Component.