Raible Designs

AppFuse 2.0 M5 Released - now with CRUD generation and XFire support

The AppFuse Team is pleased to announce the release of AppFuse 2.0 M5! This release marks a milestone in the features of AppFuse 2.x. This release adds CRUD code generation, full source support (just like 1.x) and XFire integration. In addition, we've fixed all the issues related to switching persistence frameworks, and you should now be able to easily switch from using Hibernate to to iBATIS or JPA. The videos have been updated for M5. The Easy CRUD with Struts 2 video shows how code generation currently works.

AppFuse 2.0 is available as a Maven archetype. For information on creating a new project using this release, please see the QuickStart Guide or the Hello World video.

If you've used AppFuse 1.x, but not 2.x, you'll want to read the FAQ and join the user mailing list if you have any questions. The Maven Reference Guide has a map of Ant » Maven commands. Maven for Newbies might also be useful if you've never used Maven before. There is some support for Ant in this release.

For more information, please see the 2.0 M5 Release Notes. If you'd like to use AppFuse offline (or download everything at once), you may want to grab the dependencies and extract them into your ~/.m2/repository directory.

The 2.0 series of AppFuse has a minumum requirement of the following specification versions:

• Java Servlet 2.4 and JavaServer Pages (JSP) 2.0
• Java 5 for Development (Java 1.4 for deployment using the Retrotranslator Plugin)

Comments and issues should be posted to the mailing list.

We appreciate the time and effort everyone has put toward contributing code and documentation, posting to the mailing lists, and logging issues. We also greatly appreciate the help from our sponsors, particularly Atlassian, Cenqua, Contegix, JetBrains, Java.net and KGBInternet. Without them, working on this project wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

Update: The videos are much lower quality than the ones I originally recorded (13 MB vs. 70 MB). If you want to view the high quality videos (they're much clearer), you can download them from java.net. If someone has a better way to compress these (I just used QuickTime's Export feature), please let me know.

Also, this release contains the first release of the AppFuse Maven Plugin. This plugin is largely based on Hibernate Tools. We modified many of the FreeMarker templates from Hibernate Tools to default to certain annotations, as well as clean up the formatting. These templates are currently available in AppFuse's SVN. Hopefully making them available is enough to satisfy Hibernate's LGPL license.

Java Web Framework Tools: How many are there?

How many tools are there for the various open source web frameworks in Java? Here's my count:

So where did I get these numbers?

Struts 2's number (4) is based on tmjee's comment on a recent post. Spring MVC consists of Spring IDE, Gaijun Studio and IDEA (which supports Spring XML code-completion). There's no Stripes tools that I know of. JSF's number (12) is from research I did in October 2005 (if you have a definitive list, let me know). Tapestry has Spindle (which only supports 3.0) and 4.0 has an IDEA Plugin. Wicket has NetBeans support (which also exists for JSF (+Facelets), Tapestry and WebWork).

Please let me know if you have any corrections to these numbers. You can also download my presentation if you'd like to refute anything before tomorrow morning. It's noon in Amsterdam right now, so you have 18 hours or so.

Update: I've updated the graphs based on comments. Thanks for your input!

Help me help you (market your web framework)

Rather than trolling through google searches, mailing list archives and Amazon book searches, I'd like to try something new. For those projects represented in my Comparing Java Web Frameworks talks (MyFaces, Spring MVC, Stripes, Struts 2, Tapestry and Wicket), would you be interested in helping me gather statistics? I think by allowing projects to gather their own statistics, we'll get a more accurate number of their statistics. Here's the questions I need you to answer:

1. How many tools (i.e. IDE plugins) are available for your web framework?
2. How many jobs are available for your framework on Dice.com? What about Indeed.com?
3. How many messages where posted to your user mailing list (or forum) in March 2007?
4. How many books are available for your framework?

Of course, if you don't have time, I'll be more than happy to gather these statistics myself. However, those that do answer might get some extra marketing love during my talk. Answering in a comment or sending me an e-mail are the best ways to provide your findings. Thanks!

Update: Alastair asks for further clarification. Here goes:

> If you have lots of IDE tooling available, it probably means the configuration for the framework is overly complex and unmanageable without tooling.

While this may be true, if your framework is hot or uber productive, people want tools. Especially new developers. Remember there's a plethora of new Java developers every year and a lot of them prefer tool-based solutions. Good or bad, IDEs are nice and people like to use them. I've had many clients dismiss frameworks simply because no tools were available.

> The framework with the largest number of jobs available is probably Struts 1. Enough said.

Yes, you're definitely right. However, Struts 1 is not in this comparison - I dropped it because I don't want to recommend it to anyone.

> People only post to user lists when they are stuck. If the framework is hard to use, there will be lots of e-mails. If it has a steep learning curve, and/or the documentation is poor, this will be particularly so. On the other hand, an active list might point to a large active user base. Who knows which is which from a raw figure?

What about community? Mailing lists and their activity is a sign of an active community. Even though SiteMesh is a mature and good solution, its community sucks. There's little support, no new features, no bug fixes. An open source project w/o a community is tough for a company to adopt. Also, the best communities do a lot more than answer questions on mailing lists. They develop their applications, get advice, offer advice and sometimes even hang out. The Struts list used to have threads 30-50 messages long about development philosophies. When you joined the mailing list, you felt like you were a part of something, not just a user of a product.

> If your framework is fairly stable, and someone has written a fabulous tome on it that is universally acknowledged as "the bible", few people would bother writing another book for it.

I don't agree - this just means there's no market for other books because not that many people are using it. Look at Grails, Groovy, GWT and Rails - there's been quite a few books on each and no slowdown in sight. Then again, there weren't many Ant books and that was/is hugely popular. I'm willing to change this question to "How many good does your framework have?", but that's up to everyone's own interpretation. Again, lots of books means there's an active community outside the immediate mailing list - it's a sign the general "market" is interested and the framework fills a need.

Of course, I am interested in asking the questions that developers want to see answered. Do you have suggestions for replacement (or new) questions? Remember, people like hard facts, not wishy washy statements about how productive and OO your framework is. Every framework can be uber productive if you have the right developer(s) and they're genuinely interested in getting stuff done.

Spring Web Flow and JSF

Keith Donald has a nice and long writeup on Spring Web Flow 1.0.3's stellar support for JSF:

One important area where our integration is growing is with the Java Server Faces (JSF) community. Beginning with Spring Web Flow 1.0.3, our JSF integration is on-par with what the Spring community expects, and delivers what JSF developers in the trenches need most. This blog will illustrate the integration enhancements to show you the difference Spring Web Flow is making for JSF developers.

One of the most interesting parts of the post is a few paragraphs down:

Basically, Web Flow solves every problem this pour soul experienced with JSF's basic navigation capabilities. As one of our leading users noted, Web Flow can be used as a complete replacement for JSF's default "forward-centric" navigation model.

It's also interesting to note that ideas from SWF could be incorporated into JSF 2.0:

I'd also like to take this opportunity to encourage those already using Spring Web Flow in a JSF environment to speak out about your experience?send me an email, leave a comment here, write an article on JSF central, tell leaders in the JSF community about your experience. Your real world experience can help influence the direction of the JSF 2.0 specification in a time where the specification lead has asked for community feedback. Interface21 has been extended an invitation from Ed Burns, the JSF specification lead, to be a part of the JSF 2.0 expert group, which is a recognition of Web Flow's contribution as an innovative JSF extension. We have accepted that invitation and are excited about helping channel whats proven to work in the area of navigation and state management on a general basis back into JSF 2.0, while continuing to chart new territory and remaining usable in any environment.

Are you using SWF with JSF? If so, have your experiences been good or bad? I'm sure Keith would love to hear about them either way.

I think it's interesting to note that both Interface21 and JBoss are doing a lot to build solutions to JSF's problems. Is there money to be made from supporting JSF? In reality, you have to like what both companies are doing: they're building solutions to overcome the shortcomings of JSF and they're contributing those solutions back to the community for free. Even cooler is the fact that both companies are trying to get their solutions into the next version of JSF. This benefits everyone as far as I'm concerned.

What about those of you using Spring Web Flow with Spring MVC or Struts? How is it working for you?

I recently integrated Spring Web Flow into my current project using the Spring Webflow Plugin. In the past, I've used SWF with Spring MVC and JSF, so the Struts 2 Plugin seemed a bit odd. I guess I'll know more once I start using it more.

This brings up a good question - do you think it's better to create a page flow (i.e. a shopping cart) without Spring Web Flow first, and then refactor? Or do you think it's easier to use SWF from the beginning? My gut feeling is to start w/o it because you may not need it. Then if you do need it, you'll understand the problems it solves. What are your thoughts?

We need to plugin in less, not more

From David Van Couvering's Blog:

I just returned from a week in Mexico, a wonderful time with my family where we lived very simply - food, rest, physical fun. No TV, no movies, no cell phones, no computers. Bright sunshine, beautiful beaches, very friendly people wherever we went.

Then I came home to San Francisco and straight to the Web 2.0 Expo. The contrast has been a bit disorienting. I don't think it's a surprise that my one year old son learned to say "Hi" in Mexico - people actually greeted him there and interacted with him. Here in the conference, on the BART train, on the street, we are all in our own world. We are on our laptops, our phones, our iPods.

The keynote talks at the Expo underscored again and again an undeniable trend: there is an ever growing explosion of the use of consumer devices and connecting to the Internet. The vast scales of data and connections we are looking at are almost impossible to imagine. The whole world is "getting connected." And those of us at the Expo are generally very excited, and see lots of opportunities to make money and and to build things that lots and lots of people will use.

But I feel a sadness when I find myself in this environment. I feel like I am losing something. I watch myself "plug in," and I feel like I am actually losing connection. I crave the open sky, the deep stillness and power of the ocean, of the smiles of people who said "Hi" to my son.

David makes some excellent points in this post. I often find that I get tied up in the virtual world of blogs and technology and forget that the real world is the one that really matters. If my computer died tomorrow and I gave it all up to help Julie remodel houses, I don't think I would lose a whole lot. In fact, I think I would be more in touch with reality and would likely strengthen friendships, rather than confuse people when I talk to them about what I do.

A commentor on David's blog says:

I am glad you discovered, or rediscovered, the beauty of simple things. It happens to many people almost every year, after vacations.

This is why I try to take at least 2 months of vacation each year. I've been doing it for around 5 years and I don't plan on changing that anytime soon. Sure, I have lots of opportunities to work my ass off, make a bunch of money and store it away for later. But that's no way to live - I want to enjoy life now and every day going forward. Sure, I'm saving money for my retirement, but I don't see the point in working like mad in hopes it'll payoff someday. Some folks say "do it while your kids are young." I think that's bullshit - there's no excuse for being a bad parent at any time in their lives.

Ant vs. Maven

I found a good post from Steve Loughran on what's wrong with Maven's repositories. I agree with most of his points, but would like to point out mvnrepository.com. This site seems to provide good XML Feeds for what's been uploaded to Maven's Central Repository. If you're using Maven, you should probably subscribe to its Atom Feed.

In related news, Timothy M. O'Brien has an entry about Steve's upcoming book: Ant in Action. This book is the 2nd edition of Java Development with Ant. I have a hard time believing Erik Hatcher is helping Steve write Ant in Action - AFAIK, he's off in Rails-land enjoying himself. Regardless, I'm sure Ant in Action will be an excellent book. Java Development with Ant is one of my favorite technical books of all time and is largely responsible for inspiring me to write AppFuse. I read JDwA way back in October 2002 and used a lot of its code to develop AppFuse 1.x's Ant-based build system.

Like Tim, I still like Ant. However, AppFuse 2.x uses Maven 2 and most of the projects I work on these days use Maven 2. It may surprise some folks, but I actually like Maven 2 (not Maven 1). Sure it has issues, but after a year of using it in anger, I know how to solve most of its quirks. AppFuse 2.x users will benefit from this greatly and I'm thinking of changing its tagline to "We make Maven work."

One of the most interesting things about moving to Maven is we were easily able to make AppFuse more like a framework than a project starter kit. We thought this is what most folks wanted - especially the ability to upgrade a project to the latest version of AppFuse. While some folks wanted this, it seems like most folks liked the full-source version that was a pain-in-the-ass to upgrade. I don't blame them. On the project I'm on, I'll likely be converting to a full-source version before the project is over. That's why APF-675 exists. I doubt we'll make it happen for the 2.0 final release, but it is on our radar of things to do shortly after. With any luck, we'll create a way to migrate projects using embedded AppFuse to full-source AppFuse.

I'd also like to point out something ironic. With AppFuse 1.x, there were a lot of folks that advocated we move to Maven. Their primary reasoning - the Ant build scripts were too long and complicated. How about a good ol' lines of XML comparison for those folks:

• Lines of Ant-related XML in AppFuse 1.x: 1655
• Lines of Maven-related XML in AppFuse 2.x: 2847

Oh wait, that's not a fair comparison. The above number is for AppFuse in SVN, which end users won't deal with. A new project created with AppFuse 2.x will likely have a pom.xml with 634 lines. That's about 1/3 of the amount needed for Ant in AppFuse 1.x. Maven hasn't exactly gotten us away from XML hell though. How about a LOC count for archetypes vs. installers:

• Lines of Ant-related XML for AppFuse 1.x framework installers: 2786
• Lines of Maven-related XML for AppFuse 2.x archetypes (including archetype's pom.xml files): Too much to count. Creating archetypes is waayyyy too complicated IMO. Basic archetypes seem to be around 740 lines (pom.xml for archetype project, archetype.xml and archetype's pom.xml), modular archetypes are around 870. 740 x 4 + 870 x 4 = 6440. I'm guessing the full-source archetypes will add another 5000 lines of XML. Ugh.

This XML-for-archetypes comparison might be unfair as well. With 1.x, you could only create a webapp, with 2.x, you can create a modular application and chop off the web-portion if you so choose.

Of course, the real benefits of moving to Maven are elsewhere. We've seen quite an uptick on the mailing list in the last few months. There's tools cropping up and I've gotten quite a few inquiries about training (yes, I do have a 3-day course on Spring, Hibernate, Ajax, Maven and AppFuse). To me, AppFuse 2.x seems more complicated than 1.x, but it seems the community thinks otherwise. Judging from the increased amount of developer activity on the project, developers seem more interested in a Maven-based system too. Then again, we are making Maven work!

Candy for AppFuse

Candy for AppFuse tries to easy the adoption and usage of AppFuse 2.0 by adding some eye candy in the form of Eclipse Plug-ins. If you want the power of an integrated set of excellent J2EE tools and frameworks managed from the comfort of your IDE, give Candy for AppFuse a try.

I downloaded and tried out this plugin yesterday. Seems to work quite nicely. See Abel Muiño's blog for more details. Well done Abel!

AppFuse 2.0 M4 Released

The AppFuse Team is pleased to announce the release of AppFuse 2.0 M4! This release marks a milestone in the usability of AppFuse 2.x. A lot of folks (including myself) have been using AppFuse 2.0 on projects and have fixed quite a few issues. In addition to polishing the tutorials, we've fixed a fair amount of i18n bugs and packaging issues with modular archetypes.

We were hoping to get AMP's code generation and XFire integrated in M4, but were it's going to have to wait until M5.

AppFuse 2.0 is available as a Maven archetype. For information on creating a new project using this release, please see the QuickStart Guide.

If you've used AppFuse 1.x, but not 2.x, you'll want to read the FAQ and join the user mailing list if you have any questions. The Maven Reference Guide has a map of Ant » Maven commands.

The 2.0 series of AppFuse has a minumum requirement of the following specification versions:

• Java Servlet 2.4 and JavaServer Pages (JSP) 2.0
• Java 5 for Development (Java 1.4 for deployment using the Retrotranslator Plugin)

For more information, please see the 2.0 M4 Release Notes. To see how AppFuse 2.x works, please see the video demos.

Comments and issues should be sent to the mailing list.

We appreciate the time and effort everyone has put toward contributing code and documentation, posting to the mailing lists, and logging issues. We also greatly appreciate the help from our sponsors, particularly Atlassian, Cenqua, Contegix, JetBrains, Java.net and KGBInternet. Without them, working on this project wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

Comparing IDEs and Issue Trackers

A couple of good comparison articles came out today:

• What issue tracking system is best for you? A review of Bugzilla, Trac, and JIRA by John Ferguson Smart
• Eclipse, NetBeans, and IntelliJ: Assessing the Survivors of the Java IDE Wars by Jacek Furmankiewicz

Issue Tracking Systems Conclusion
These products reviewed are among the most widely used in the Java community. Bugzilla, with an uninspiring user interface, is rich in features, but undeniably cumbersome to install and to maintain. Trac is a good, lightweight solution that should be seriously considered by any development team using Subversion. JIRA is a solid, powerful solution, providing almost all of the features of Bugzilla, and more, in an eminently more usable (and more productive) form ? but at a cost.

I agree with John's conclusion - Bugzilla was cool 5 years ago, but there's much better systems now. If you're running an open source project, it's a no-brainer to use JIRA. If you're working at a company and want to use an open-source solution, Trac works well.

IDE Wars Conclusion
For enterprise development, I'd say IDEA wins out with its rich support for both J2EE and Java EE 5, followed closely by NetBeans (which also does an impressive job here), and last is Eclipse/MyEclipse (mostly due to their current lack of support for Java EE 5).

I agree with Jacek as well. I've been using IDEA almost exclusively for the last 6 months - ever since I started to convert AppFuse to use Maven 2. Eclipse's support for sub-projects has been pretty pitiful and IDEA has *much* better support for web development - particularly JavaScript and CSS.

Lately, I've found myself advocating IDEA and JIRA to clients more and more. A few years ago it was Bugzilla and Eclipse. However, these IDEA and JIRA (as well as Confluence and FishEye) are so cheap in the relative scheme of things - I think they actually pay for themselves these days.

Disclaimer: I use IDEA, Confluence and JIRA on a daily basis. I use Trac and Eclipse on a weekly basis. I paid for my original IDEA license out of my own pocket, but I received my most recent license for speaking at Denver's JUG. Confluence and JIRA are provided free of charge by Atlassian for AppFuse.

Integrating Selenium with Maven 2

I spent some time this past week integrating Selenium with Maven 2. This post is designed to show you how to do this in your Maven 2 projects.

First of all, there were two types of testing scenarios I wanted to make possible. The first was to allow HTML-based tests that web designers could create and run with Selenium IDE. As far as I know, Selenium IDE is capable of recording and exporting Java-based tests (powered by TestNG or JUnit), but I don't believe it's capable of playing them back. So for Java Developers, I wanted to allow them to write their tests in Java.

To get Maven to run HTML-based tests, the easiest way seems to be using the <selenese> Ant task. I tried Mavenium as well, but it 1) doesn't use the latest version of Selenium RC and 2) reports success when tests fail. Below is a Maven profile that I'm using in an AppFuse-based project to run HTML tests.

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <id>integration-test</id>
        <activation>
            <property>
                <name>!maven.test.skip</name>
            </property>
        </activation>
        <build>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.codehaus.cargo</groupId>
                    <artifactId>cargo-maven2-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>0.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
                    <configuration>
                        <wait>${cargo.wait}</wait>
                        <container>
                            <containerId>${cargo.container}</containerId>
                            <!--home>${cargo.container.home}</home-->
                            <zipUrlInstaller>
                                <url>${cargo.container.url}</url>
                                <installDir>${installDir}</installDir>
                            </zipUrlInstaller>
                        </container>
                        <configuration>
                            <home>${project.build.directory}/${cargo.container}/container</home>
                            <properties>
                                <cargo.hostname>${cargo.host}</cargo.hostname>
                                <cargo.servlet.port>${cargo.port}</cargo.servlet.port>
                            </properties>
                        </configuration>
                    </configuration>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <id>start-container</id>
                            <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>start</goal>
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                        <execution>
                            <id>stop-container</id>
                            <phase>post-integration-test</phase>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>stop</goal>
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>
                <plugin>
                    <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <id>launch-selenium</id>
                            <phase>integration-test</phase>
                            <configuration>
                                <tasks>
                                    <taskdef resource="selenium-ant.properties">
                                        <classpath refid="maven.plugin.classpath"/>
                                    </taskdef>
                                    <selenese suite="src/test/resources/selenium/TestSuite.html"
                                              browser="*firefox" timeoutInSeconds="180" port="5555"
                                              results="${project.build.directory}/selenium-firefox-results.html"
                                              startURL="http://${cargo.host}:${cargo.port}/${project.build.finalName}/"/>
                                </tasks>
                            </configuration>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>run</goal>
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                    <dependencies>
                        <dependency>
                            <groupId>ant</groupId>
                            <artifactId>ant-nodeps</artifactId>
                            <version>1.6.5</version>
                        </dependency>
                        <dependency>
                            <groupId>org.openqa.selenium.server</groupId>
                            <artifactId>selenium-server</artifactId>
                            <version>0.9.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
                        </dependency>
                    </dependencies>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </build>
    </profile>
    <profile>
        <id>selenium-ie</id>
        <activation>
            <os>
                <family>windows</family>
            </os>
        </activation>
        <build>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <id>launch-selenium</id>
                            <phase>integration-test</phase>
                            <configuration>
                                <tasks>
                                    <taskdef resource="selenium-ant.properties">
                                        <classpath refid="maven.plugin.classpath"/>
                                    </taskdef>
                                    <selenese suite="src/test/resources/selenium/TestSuite.html"
                                              browser="*firefox" timeoutInSeconds="180" port="5555"
                                              results="${project.build.directory}/selenium-firefox-results.html"
                                              startURL="http://${cargo.host}:${cargo.port}/${project.build.finalName}/"/>
                                    <selenese suite="src/test/resources/selenium/TestSuite.html"
                                              browser="*iexplore" timeoutInSeconds="180" port="5555"
                                              results="${project.build.directory}/selenium-ie-results.html"
                                              startURL="http://${cargo.host}:${cargo.port}/${project.build.finalName}/"/>
                                </tasks>
                            </configuration>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>run</goal>
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </build>
    </profile>
</profiles>

The above setup will allow you to run Selenium tests in Firefox, and in IE as well when you're on Windows. I tried to get Safari to work on the Mac, but it just opens Safari and hangs.

HTML tests are great for non-programmers, but what about developers that prefer Java and want test reports to be included in the surefire-plugin's reports? That's easy enough. First of all, put your tests in a particular package so they can be excluded from the normal testing cycle. I used a webapp.selenium package. I configured the surefire-plugin to exclude these tests:

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <excludes>
            <exclude>**/selenium/*Test.java</exclude>
        </excludes>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

Then I added the newly released selenium-maven-plugin to my "integration-test" profile and configured surefire to run the Selenium Java tests.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>selenium-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-beta-1</version>  
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>start-selenium</id>
            <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>start-server</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <background>true</background>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>
<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>surefire-it</id>
            <phase>integration-test</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>test</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <excludes>
                    <exclude>none</exclude>
                </excludes>
                <includes>
                    <include>**/selenium/*Test.java</include>
                </includes>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

Yeah, Maven can be quite verbose when configuring profiles. I contacted the Maven list to see if it's possible to simplify all this XML, but so far haven't found a solution.

If you'd like to see a pom.xml with the Selenium bits and a profile that runs both HTML and Java-based tests, click here (JavaScript needs to be enabled for this to work).

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <excludes>
                    <exclude>**/selenium/*Test.java</exclude>
                </excludes>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>openqa</id>
        <url>http://maven.openqa.org</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.openqa.selenium.client-drivers</groupId>
        <artifactId>selenium-java-client-driver</artifactId>
        <version>0.9.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <id>integration-test</id>
        <activation>
            <property>
                <name>!maven.test.skip</name>
            </property>
        </activation>
        <build>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.codehaus.cargo</groupId>
                    <artifactId>cargo-maven2-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>0.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
                    <configuration>
                        <wait>${cargo.wait}</wait>
                        <container>
                            <containerId>${cargo.container}</containerId>
                            <!--home>${cargo.container.home}</home-->
                            <zipUrlInstaller>
                                <url>${cargo.container.url}</url>
                                <installDir>${installDir}</installDir>
                            </zipUrlInstaller>
                        </container>
                        <configuration>
                            <home>${project.build.directory}/${cargo.container}/container</home>
                            <properties>
                                <cargo.hostname>${cargo.host}</cargo.hostname>
                                <cargo.servlet.port>${cargo.port}</cargo.servlet.port>
                            </properties>
                        </configuration>
                    </configuration>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <id>start-container</id>
                            <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>start</goal>
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                        <execution>
                            <id>stop-container</id>
                            <phase>post-integration-test</phase>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>stop</goal>
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>
                <!-- Configuration to run Java-based Selenium tests -->
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                    <artifactId>selenium-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>1.0-beta-1</version>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <id>start-selenium</id>
                            <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>start-server</goal>
                            </goals>
                            <configuration>
                                <background>true</background>
                            </configuration>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>
                <plugin>
                    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <id>surefire-it</id>
                            <phase>integration-test</phase>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>test</goal>
                            </goals>
                            <configuration>
                                <excludes>
                                    <exclude>none</exclude>
                                </excludes>
                                <includes>
                                    <include>**/selenium/*Test.java</include>
                                </includes>
                            </configuration>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>
                <!-- End of configuration for Java-based tests -->
                <plugin>
                    <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <id>launch-selenium</id>
                            <phase>integration-test</phase>
                            <configuration>
                                <tasks>
                                    <taskdef resource="selenium-ant.properties">
                                        <classpath refid="maven.plugin.classpath"/>
                                    </taskdef>
                                    <selenese suite="src/test/resources/selenium/TestSuite.html"
                                              browser="*firefox" timeoutInSeconds="180" port="5555"
                                              results="${project.build.directory}/selenium-firefox-results.html"
                                              startURL="http://${cargo.host}:${cargo.port}/${project.build.finalName}/"/>
                                </tasks>
                            </configuration>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>run</goal>
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                    <dependencies>
                        <dependency>
                            <groupId>ant</groupId>
                            <artifactId>ant-nodeps</artifactId>
                            <version>1.6.5</version>
                        </dependency>
                        <dependency>
                            <groupId>org.openqa.selenium.server</groupId>
                            <artifactId>selenium-server</artifactId>
                            <version>0.9.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
                        </dependency>
                    </dependencies>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </build>
    </profile>
    <profile>
        <id>selenium-ie</id>
        <activation>
            <os>
                <family>windows</family>
            </os>
        </activation>
        <build>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <id>launch-selenium</id>
                            <phase>integration-test</phase>
                            <configuration>
                                <tasks>
                                    <taskdef resource="selenium-ant.properties">
                                        <classpath refid="maven.plugin.classpath"/>
                                    </taskdef>
                                    <selenese suite="src/test/resources/selenium/TestSuite.html"
                                              browser="*firefox" timeoutInSeconds="180" port="5555"
                                              results="${project.build.directory}/selenium-firefox-results.html"
                                              startURL="http://${cargo.host}:${cargo.port}/${project.build.finalName}/"/>
                                    <selenese suite="src/test/resources/selenium/TestSuite.html"
                                              browser="*iexplore" timeoutInSeconds="180" port="5555"
                                              results="${project.build.directory}/selenium-ie-results.html"
                                              startURL="http://${cargo.host}:${cargo.port}/${project.build.finalName}/"/>
                                </tasks>
                            </configuration>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>run</goal>
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </build>
    </profile>
</profiles>

NOTE: I used 0.9.1-SNAPSHOT of Selenium Server because it solves issues with the latest version of Firefox.

This brings up a related question I asked on the AppFuse mailing list a couple of days ago:

Do you use the Canoo WebTests? If not, how do you do UI testing? If so, would you prefer Selenium?

If you've tried AppFuse 2.x and have an opinion, please add a comment. Personally, I like Selenium, but I like how Canoo WebTest can be somewhat friendly to designers and allow i18n testing with Ant's property file support. With Selenium, you have to use parse/replace or Java tests to do i18n testing. Then again, if you need to test a lot of Ajax functionality, it's likely that Selenium will work much better for you.