The Angular Mini-Book is a
guide to getting started with Angular. You'll learn how to develop a bare-bones application, test it, and
deploy it. Then you'll move on to adding Bootstrap, Angular Material, continuous integration, and authentication.
Spring Boot is a popular framework for building REST APIs. You'll learn how to integrate Angular with Spring Boot and use security best practices like HTTPS and a content security policy.
For book updates, follow @angular_book on Twitter.
The JHipster Mini-Book is a
guide to getting started with hip technologies today: Angular, Bootstrap, and Spring
Boot. All of these frameworks are wrapped up in an easy-to-use project called JHipster.
This book shows you how to build an app with JHipster, and guides you through the plethora of tools, techniques and options you can use. Furthermore, it explains the UI and API building blocks so you understand the underpinnings of your great application.
For book updates, follow @jhipster-book on Twitter.
From the Wicket user mailing list:
We have Graduation! Apache Wicket is established as a top level project within the Apache Software Foundation.
Congratulations to the most enthusiastic and passionate web framework development team in Javaland!
From a message I sent earlier to the AppFuse user mailing list:
After getting Dojo's DropdownDatePicker working with both Struts and Spring MVC, I've run into a snag:
You can no longer use Canoo WebTest to enter dates in a form.
It doesn't find the form element because HtmlUnit (the underlying browser implementation for Canoo) doesn't understand/render Dojo's components.
For users, workarounds include:
1. Don't write tests for entering data on forms that have required dates.
2. Don't make dates required.
Either way, it seems logical to move to Selenium for UI testing.
What do you think? Are Dojo-based components the future of Ajax support in Java web frameworks? If so, I wish Dojo allowed more "progressive enhancement" features instead of the invalid HTML feature it seems to rely on now. I'm more than willing to support Dojo if that's what AppFuse users want. However, in my experience
with Struts 2's datetimepicker, it seems pretty slow. Of course, if I could render my own input element and then add a datepicker next to it, I'd be much happier. AFAICT, the Struts' datetimepicker doesn't allow you to do this, but I could be wrong.
Of course, if Dojo 0.9 lives up to the hype and is much faster - maybe I should quit caring about Hijax and just start writing those Selenium tests?
For users of those "next-gen" Java frameworks (like Seam, Grails and Wicket), what do you use for UI testing? Does Canoo WebTest work for you when you have a lot of Ajax functionality? If not, do you use Selenium or leave UI testing up to the QA folks?
Update: I ended up using jscalendar for both Spring MVC and Struts 2's datepickers. It's simply the best tool for the job. Dojo is too bloated IMO (240K for a datepicker!) for such a small feature. This allows us to worry about getting AppFuse 2.0 out the door without migrating to Selenium first. We will eventually migrate to Selenium (it's a better tool for the job IMO), but probably not until 2.1. The only question is what's the best way to distribute Selenium tests?
Spotted on the Acegi Security mailing list several weeks ago:
A few weeks ago, I started an open source project (Security Annotation Framework) which addresses annotation-based, instance-level access control for Spring applications. It is also based on Spring 2.0's extensible XML authoring features. You can find more info at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/safr and http://safr.sourceforge.net
The framework was created during a project in 2006 and is now available under the Apache 2.0 license. It's a generic framework focused on processing security annotations on Spring beans as well as domain objects (which typically aren't managed by a Spring application context) and can be used to enforce access decisions for domain object instances. It can be used with any authorization provider and is not specific to Acegi. However, I plan to include an example how to use the SAF with Acegi authorization soon. Furthermore, it supports inheritance of annotations from base classes and interfaces.
What do you think about SAF? Are annotations a better way of implementing ACLs on domain objects?
Here's a couple of good blog entries I've enjoyed reading over the past few days - in case you missed them:
Warner is spot on when it comes to Tapestry's biggest problem. Let's hope Tapestry 5 is the end-all-be-all that Howard thinks it will be. As for Gavin's post, I like it because it's mostly true and the f-bomb makes it enjoyable to read. ;-)
I said I'd post my presentation after my talk this morning, so here it is:
Download Comparing Java Web Frameworks Presentation (1.1 MB)
I went a bit long on the presentation, but the crowd (standing room only) seemed to enjoy it. Thanks to all who attended!
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!
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:
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.
AppFuse Light 1.8 Beta adds CSS Framework integration, as well as support
for Stripes (1.4.2) and Wicket (1.2.6). This is a beta release so we can work out some kinks before the final release.
AppFuse Light now offers 60 possible combinations for
download:
If you have any questions about this release, please subscribe to the AppFuse user mailing list by sending a blank e-mail to
[email protected]
If you're a developer of one of the frameworks that AppFuse Light uses - I'd love a code review to make sure I'm "up to snuff" on how to use your framework. I'm also more than willing to give commit rights if you'd like to improve the implementation of your framework.
Live demos are available at:
Update: Based on Martin's blog post, I've added the version numbers for Stripes and Wicket (1.4.2 and 1.2.6, respectively). While the Wicket guys recommended I use Wicket 1.3.0, I was already knee deep in 1.2.6 when I read their recommendation. If 1.3.0 really is that much better than 1.2.6, it should be a pleasure to upgrade (and a good learning experience too boot!).
From Andrew Williams:
Thats right, there is a new guide out there to help all those interested in Maven (or already using it) to get the most out of their build lifecycle. It is indeed the definitive guide and will be regularly updated so it stays that way. This book is produced by my colleges at Sonatype and is a free gift to the Maven community - no registration, no catches
More documentation has never hurt an open source project. Is the book open source too?
In other kick-ass news, Flex was open sourced today. Does this mean the server is open sourced too and we can run a Flex app for free? I see the competition between OpenLaszlo and Flex heating up in the near future. Both are pretty good if you like working with XML. Does your web framework have support for OpenLaszlo and Flex?
As part of my upcoming Comparing Java Web Frameworks talk, I'd like to show some statistics of web framework usage in AppFuse. Please vote for the one you're using by clicking on the link below. I'm mostly looking for current AppFuse users. By that, I mean folks that have used 1.x or 2.x on a project in the last 6 months, or plan on using it in the next month or two.
You'll need to create an account and login to vote. To do this, go to View > Account > Sign Up (after clicking on the link below).
I'll compile the results of this poll on Friday morning (April 27th), so you have until then for your vote to be counted!
On a related note, if anyone knows how to get the monthly posting statistics from Spring MVC's forums, I'd love to hear about it. My "mailing list traffic" slide has excluded them for the past couple of years because I've been unable to get a count of monthly postings.
NOTE: If you vote by adding a comment to this entry, it won't be counted.
Update: Thanks to the 64 of you that voted. Here's the results of the poll:
As I said last time, I find the results interesting because AppFuse lowers the barriers and reduces the learning curve for all of these frameworks.
