Icefaces custom tag with facelets

I've been struggling with creating my own icefaces tag that I could use everywhere it's needed. There are many tutorials on the internet, BUT.. I couldn't get it work anyway.

When I looked at the sourcecode on the webpage, the tag     <ticker:ticker />  was there directly in the HTML sourcecode. This is wrong, because I expected the rendered ouput there.

One whole week I tried to solve this problem trying almost everything. But then, finally, I found it.

So, what was the problem? When you are using Facelets with your JSF/Icefaces, the TLD (tag library descriptor) files are for nothing. Even if I tried to place them everywhere. You have to create the equivalent of the TLD file for the Facelets - the XML file describing the tag structure. In this case it's ticker.taglib.xml

 There you specify the component's class - Ticker, and it's renderer - TickerRenderer. Now, you don't need the TickerTag as suggested when using JSP in many tutorials around the internet.

    <context-param>
        <param-name>facelets.LIBRARIES</param-name>
        <param-value>
            /WEB-INF/ticker.taglib.xml;/WEB-INF/tomahawk.taglib.xml
        </param-value>
    </context-param>

 
JSF source with a custom tag

Rendered output

I wonder why this 'trick' hasn't been described yet in some tutorial. So, I hope you will find this remark useful and it will help you when creating your own JSF components.