One of the interesting features of ICEfaces is its server-initiated
rendering. This technique allows push updates to components rendered
by Web browsers. This topic explains how to make push updates to JViews JSF components.
JViews components
are Ajax-enabled components and their contents are generally JPG or
PNG images generated by JViews server-side
servlet supports. There is no way to push images directly to JViews JSF components.
ICEfaces is able to push elements such as HTML fragments
and JavaScript™
code but not images.
However, you can use the ICEfaces push mechanism to notify client-side JViews JSF components
that updates are available on the server. Then the JViews JSF components
can use the Ajax mechanism to get the updated images. This approach
is quite efficient in terms of network traffic.
To notify client-side JViews JSF components,
you can use the ICEfaces server-initiated rendering technique to
push JavaScript code. The ICEfaces Ajax agent receives and evaluates
the code. For example, you can use the following JavaScript code.
<script type="text/javascript">diagrammer.updateImage();</script>
This code tells a JViews diagram
component to update its contents.