How to Use Font Awesome with JSF: Why Are My Icons Showing Empty Squares?

Accessing Font Awesome Font Files in JSF

Integrating Font Awesome with JSF requires consideration of how the CSS file references font files. By default, the Font Awesome CSS file uses relative paths, which can cause issues when accessing the files through the JSF resource mapping system.

Root Cause of Empty Font Squares

In JSF, the tag with a specified library attribute uses a special path prefix of /javax.faces.resource/* to access resources. When the Font Awesome CSS file is accessed via this path, the relative paths within the CSS file become incorrect, resulting in the browser failing to find the font files.

Solution: Adjust CSS File References

To address this issue, the Font Awesome CSS file must be modified to use EL expressions to reference the font files via the #{resource} mapping. For example, the following code snippet updates the font file references:

<code class="css">@font-face {
  font-family: 'FontAwesome';
  src: url("#{resource['font-awesome:fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot']}&amp;v=4.3.0");
  ...
}</code>

Replace all relative paths with expressions using the #{resource} mapping.

Additional Considerations

• Restart the server after editing the CSS file to ensure the changes take effect.
• If warnings appear in the server logs regarding missing MIME types for font files, add the necessary MIME mappings to web.xml.
• Alternatively, install the OmniFaces UnmappedResourceHandler to simplify the resource handling process.
• To use Font Awesome CSS without the library attribute, reference the file directly in JSF using the name attribute:

<code class="html"><h:outputStylesheet name="font-awesome/css/font-awesome.min.css" /></code>

Additional Resources

• [How to use Font Awesome from webjars.org with JSF](relevant reference link)

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