Semantics of “?faces-redirect=true” in and why not use it everywhere

Question

I would like to understand what are the semantics behind appending the \"?faces-redirect=true\" in the action property of a t

Answer 1

Page-to-page navigation should not be performed using POST at all. You should be using normal <h:link> or <h:button> for this instead of <h:commandLink> or <h:commandButton>.

So instead of

<h:commandLink value="Next page" action=nextpage.xhtml?faces-redirect=true" />

you should actually be using

<h:link value="Next page" outcome="nextpage.xhtml" />

This has the major benefit that the website is now SEO friendly. Searchbots namely doesn't index forms.

Use the <h:commandLink> only if you need to submit a form with some user input. But more than often the result is just presented in the same page, if necesary conditionally rendered/included. Only on successful submits which absolutely needs to go to a different page (e.g. login/logout), you should indeed be sending a redirect. This is the so-called Post-Redirect-Get pattern.

See also

• How to navigate in JSF? How to make URL reflect current page (and not previous one)
• When should I use h:outputLink instead of h:commandLink?