The easiest way to integrate one's Spring middle-tier with one's JSF web layer is to use the DelegatingVariableResolver class. To configure this variable resolver in one's application, one will need to edit one's faces-context.xml file. After the opening <faces-config/> element, add an <application/> element and a <variable-resolver/> element within it. The value of the variable resolver should reference Spring's DelegatingVariableResolver; for example:

<faces-config>
  <application>
    <variable-resolver>org.springframework.web.jsf.DelegatingVariableResolver</variable-resolver>
    <locale-config>
      <default-locale>en</default-locale>
      <supported-locale>en</supported-locale>
      <supported-locale>es</supported-locale>
    </locale-config>
    <message-bundle>messages</message-bundle>
  </application>
</faces-config>

The DelegatingVariableResolver will first delegate value lookups to the default resolver of the underlying JSF implementation, and then to Spring's 'business context' WebApplicationContext. This allows one to easily inject dependencies into one's JSF-managed beans.

Managed beans are defined in one's faces-config.xml file. Find below an example where #{userManager} is a bean that is retrieved from the Spring 'business context'.

<managed-bean>
  <managed-bean-name>userList</managed-bean-name>
  <managed-bean-class>com.whatever.jsf.UserList</managed-bean-class>
  <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
  <managed-property>
    <property-name>userManager</property-name>
    <value>#{userManager}</value>
  </managed-property>
</managed-bean>

SpringBeanVariableResolver is a variant of DelegatingVariableResolver. It delegates to the Spring's 'business context' WebApplicationContext first, then to the default resolver of the underlying JSF implementation. This is useful in particular when using request/session-scoped beans with special Spring resolution rules, e.g. Spring FactoryBean implementations.

Configuration-wise, simply define SpringBeanVariableResolver in your faces-context.xml file:

<faces-config>
  <application>
    <variable-resolver>org.springframework.web.jsf.SpringBeanVariableResolver</variable-resolver>
    ...
  </application>
</faces-config>

SpringBeanFacesELResolver is a JSF 1.2 compliant ELResolver implementation, integrating with the standard Unified EL as used by JSF 1.2 and JSP 2.1. Like SpringBeanVariableResolver, it delegates to the Spring's 'business context' WebApplicationContext first, then to the default resolver of the underlying JSF implementation.

Configuration-wise, simply define SpringBeanFacesELResolver in your JSF 1.2 faces-context.xml file:

<faces-config>
  <application>
    <el-resolver>org.springframework.web.jsf.el.SpringBeanFacesELResolver</el-resolver>
    ...
  </application>
</faces-config>

A custom VariableResolver works well when mapping one's properties to beans in faces-config.xml, but at times one may need to grab a bean explicitly. The FacesContextUtils class makes this easy. It is similar to WebApplicationContextUtils, except that it takes a FacesContext parameter rather than a ServletContext parameter.

ApplicationContext ctx = FacesContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance());