In the IDE

When you complete the steps for creating the page flow on a diagram, the diagrammer should look similar to this:

The page flow diagram shows two page icons and the two navigation cases you have defined, goBrowse and goEdit. At this point, the page icons on the diagram represent JSF pages for which the physical files have not been created yet. In the next cue card, you will create the actual files for the pages, then the page icons will change to indicate that physical files are associated with the icons.

When you draw navigation cases on a page flow diagram:

• The required navigation rules and cases are automatically added to the JSF configuration file ( faces-config.xml) for you.
• The different cases for each rule are shown on the diagram as arrows connecting the pages in your application, with the direction of the arrow indicating the pages that users navigate to and from. A label is associated with each case, to distinguish different cases from a single page.

There are two ways to change the outcome of a navigation case: change the label directly on the diagram, or select the navigation case on the diagram and then use the Property Inspector to change the From Outcome property.

You can use the overview editor for JSF configuration files to see the rules and cases that JDeveloper has added by clicking the Overview tab in the editor window and selecting Navigation Rules from the element list.

You can see the same rules written in XML by clicking the Source tab to view the faces-config.xml file using the XML editor.

Each navigation rule defines what the destination should be for one or more links from a single page. For each link on a page, you need a separate case of the rule, that is, a navigation case. Later when you design the user interface on the pages, you will add a button to each page and tie the button to the appropriate navigation case outcome. At runtime when users click a button on a page, the button executes the page flow and the application navigates to the destination page defined in the outcome.

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