Recommended framework for Java web interfaces

[NS du Toit]

Hi CTJUG,

What website frontend technologies do you use and recommend?

I'm looking to improve my methods in this area.  What is the best way to go about this?  Currently I still use scriplets (Java code directly within the JSP).....

Not an expert in this area...but it seems like Google is also focusing more on Dart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dart_(programming_language)) now than Google Web Toolkit...

Is Apache Wicket (http://wicket.apache.org/) something worth looking at?

Appreciated :)

Serdyn du Toit

[Dion Dodgen]

Hi Serdyn,

You asking a question which is extremely open to subjectivity, driven by design and requirement, so this response wont get much milage.

If you just exploring away from jsp / Servlets, I would look at something MVC as its one of the most commonly employed patterns in the Web tier.

There are multitudes of frameworks with varied support for add ons and goodies like validation, XHR, i18n, templating etc

Some examples:
Struts, JSF, Spring MVC, Stripes

You could even wonder down the polyglot path.


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[Moandji Ezana]

This is a rather vast topic. It kind of depends which approach you prefer. Here is a cursory overview of some of them.

Action-oriented:

Generate HTML pages on the server-side. Add in some JavaScript for interactivity. Frameworks: Spring MVC, Struts 2, Play! 2

Component-oriented:

Operate on an in-memory model of your pages. Generally only used for low-traffic, intranet/business sites. Frameworks: JSF, Wicket

RESTful:

The Java backend serves as a set of data endpoints/resources and only or mostly returns data to clients. Most useful when you have multiple clients (JavaScript-heavy web site, Android, iOS, mobile web...). Frameworks: JAX-RS, but more full-featured action-oriented ones can be used, too.

BTW, JSP is an absolutely dreadful templating technology. Play! 2 has an excellent one, Jamon is another. If you must use a dynamically-typed templating engine, check out StringTemplate, Velocity, Freemarker or Mustache. A few frameworks help JSP not be quite as dreadful, such as SiteMesh and Tiles.

Dion's recommendation to look at the MVC pattern is a good one, especially if you're doing a rich front-end that actually adheres to the real MVC pattern. Spring MVC may have MVC in the name but, really, the HTTP request-response cycle is very far removed from real MVC. But that's perhaps another debate ;).

Moandji

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 9:46 PM, NS du Toit <duto...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Dudley Butt]

Play!

[Serdyn du Toit]

Thank you Dion, Dudley, Moandji for your responses - appreciated.

I've used MVC (Struts) before and I understand that its object-orientated heaven - but on the contrary it does increase development time.  And using straight-forward scriplets means you can immediately from the JSP level start stepping through your backend code - versus having to walk through the MVC model trying to find the code you need to work on (but this in the context of projects where everyone is versed in Java and the JSP layer is the least important section of the code...only about 0.5% of the codebase)

I have implemented RESTful interfaces - but in the context of this discussion I'm only interested in catering for Java clients.

That said - now I want to write more readable JSP code with the scriplets encapsulated away (without hopefully increasing development time for no supermayor business value).

Think I'll check out Wicket and Stripes for a start...  And will also have a look at Play...

Thanks guys - appreciated :)

Serdyn

[David Tinker]

I have been using Grails for nearly a year now and its very good.
Essentially its a clone of Ruby on Rails but using Groovy + Spring +
Hibernate instead. Groovy is very much more productive than Java and
it all runs on a familiar and powerful stack (Spring). Groovy and Java
interoperate so you can use Java as well (e.g. for performance
reasons). IntelliJ has excellent Grails support, managing to do an
admirable job helping out with a dynamically typed language.

As a point of reference I have previously used GWT (which can be used
with Grails), Spring MVC, Tapestry (pre-cursor to Wicket really),
Struts, Webwork, home rolled with JSP, Cocoon (XML and XSLT). I have
also written on Ruby on Rails app (which was nice but Grails is as
good and the Java libs you can get are much better quality that whats
available for Ruby).

I haven't used Play. I wasn't happy that it didn't use any of the
existing Java stuff.

http://twoogleplus.com/ Online service to cross-post tweets to Google+
http://engage.calibreapps.com/ Engage - Web based goal setting and
performance management

[Hans - Peter Krueger]

My impression is that Rails community is much more active (more commits) than Grails. However, if you are a Java developer already you should think twice about moving towards a completely new technology stack. Obviously one big advantage of Grails is to be able to tap into a large set of Java libraries which can be very beneficial at times.

For my web project, I decided to be pragmatic and go for a very lean technology stack. GAE, Spring MVC (REST), Java, JSTL, JQuery and a few smaller libraries that make my life easier in dealing with testing, collections and form validation.

No time to learn complicated web frameworks that make you prisoner of the preferred programming model at the time when all you wanted was to turn the freakin button red.

Sent from my iPhone

[Mark van Wyk]

Hi Sedryn,

Disclaimer: This email is STRICTLY MY OPINION

I must disagree with your statement:

"I've used MVC (Struts) before and I understand that its object-orientated heaven - but on the contrary it does increase development time"

Although this used to be true of Struts, Spring, etc in the past, that scenario has changed dramatically.

I recently had to do a grails project - from not touching it before, and I had a demo sample MVC application running within a few hours. You can honestly budget a 2 day learning curve with Grails, and have a full MVC app up and riding.

Because Grails (and Play 2) are full stack frameworks, the take care of View handling, Controller Setup, Logging, Database ORM, etc - saving you hours and hours of set up, research and debugging. Both Play! and Grails come with command line environments that by default automatically redeploy classes, pages, etc on save. This is a huge time saver.

They both have dependency management, so trying play update-dependencies or grails update dependencies will automatically fetch all the dependencies - which is fantastic if you're collaborating as a team - so you need not worry about setting up Maven either.

For me the decision shouldn't be whether to use a MVC framework or not, that should be a given. The real question for you now (in my opinion) is whether to use component driven or action driven design. 

Using fancy components (like ZK, JSF, Vaadin, etc) seems like an excellent idea - no JavaScript or HTML - but as Mwanji and I discovered, trying to customize the look and feel, or get fine grailed control over the controls is almost impossible. Also, the automagicness of it makes your success heavily dependent on documentation - and most of these frameworks have less than desirable documentation.

For this reason, we decided to use straight HTML / JavaScript  (with the help of JQuery) as a front end, and Play 2.0 or Grails as a backend.

Both Play 2.0 and Grails have view helpers that can help you generate forms, and both make it really easy to do validation, read forms, etc.

Choosing between Grails or Play 2.0 - they're both brilliant. I'll skip the advantages - there are too many to list, and look at the disadvantages:

Play 2.0 Disadvantages (personal opinion)

 - I found scala templating langage a little difficult to get used to, although Mwanji would disagree I'm sure.

 - Deployment can be a bit strange. You need to use a plugin to create WAR files (built in for future release). It's easier to package it as a netty standalone app.

 - Can't get the IP address of the requesting user agent (yet). Planned for a future release.

 - No built in support for netbeans (although I have a solution for this too)

Grails Disadvantages (personal opinion)

 - Took me a little time to get used to Groovy - although it't really fantastic!

 - There is tonnes of good documentation, but I find it's organized in a bit of a strange manner!

 - Form handling and validation not as simple as Play

That's my 2 cents.

Mark

Mark van Wyk

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[Brian Silberbauer]

Just a thought: 

If you are going the grails/ruby/play framework and using mainly javascript, why not just go with a javascript framework, node.js and some easy back end like mongodb? It javascript alll the way down ;)

This idea was put forward to me by a collegue and I've been mulling it over and can't really flaw it.

Brian

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[Dion Dodgen]

A little stack I like to play with:

knockout.js, express , node (server up in < 1sec) + (java middle) + nosql mongoDB or couchDB or Redis.. mulling : )

Kind Regards,
Dion

[Ian Petzer]

If you want to use Javascript all the way down.. There are two options for creating web apps.

http://meteor.com/

http://developer.yahoo.com/cocktails/mojito/docs/intro/mojito_overview.html#what-is-mojito

On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 10:31 AM, Brian Silberbauer <brian.si...@gamatam.com> wrote:

[Mark van Wyk]

+1 Brain for Node.js - I haven't tried it out, but it looks real simple to use and I've heard really great things.

By the way, we're now hosting on Heroku.com (free for staging), and they have built in support for Grails, Play 2.0 and Node.js (among others).

i.e. >git push heroku mater = site deployed

[Dion Dodgen]

Nice mentions guys,

Open Shift is also an option for node + java, JBoss of course : ) free at the moment, with git push your friend.

Kind Regards,
Dion

[Moandji Ezana]

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 10:51 PM, Serdyn du Toit <duto...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've used MVC (Struts) before and I understand that its object-orientated heaven - but on the contrary it does increase development time.

Do you mean Struts 1 or 2?

 

And using straight-forward scriplets means you can immediately from the JSP level start stepping through your backend code - versus having to walk through the MVC model trying to find the code you need to work on (but this in the context of projects where everyone is versed in Java and the JSP layer is the least important section of the code...only about 0.5% of the codebase)

Although many would disagree with you, I actually agree. Except that JSP and scriptlets is a horrible way to do it. I really enjoy using Jamon, a standalone, strongly-typed Java templating engine. It uses Java in the templates and generates Java classes that you can include in your sources, so you have a direct connection between template and Java code. You can easily set breakpoints in the generated code, if necessary. Of course, it's up to you to separate view logic from business logic, but that's basic separation of concerns. Overall, I find it very natural to use Java in templates if you're using it in the rest of the project.

Moandji

[Moandji Ezana]

On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 7:39 AM, David Tinker <david....@gmail.com> wrote:

I haven't used Play. I wasn't happy that it didn't use any of the
existing Java stuff.

It uses lots and lots of "existing Java stuff". There's even some Spring in there and JPA can be set up. Admittedly, it doesn't use the servlet API, but who does, really?

Moandji

[adhirra...@gmail.com]

Hi all

Openshift is really great! Apart from the predefined stacks that's offered, openshift gives you the option to build you own stack with technologies external to what they offer.

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From: Dion Dodgen <dion....@gmail.com>

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Subject: Re: [CTJUG Forum] Recommended framework for Java web interfaces

[Mark van Wyk]

Hi Sedryn,

At this point, you should be 5 times more confused than when you started.

I'm not pushing any technology, I'd just like to mention that if you're more interested in getting the work done than the coolness of the technology, then Grails is stupidly easy to get going in. 

In fact, you can design all your models and set up the relationships for them, and type in one or 2 commands, and Grails will create the entire database for you, and create working validated views for you. In other words, you can spend 30 minutes designing all your models, then generate the scaffolding, and you will have a full database driven web app developed for you in another 5 minutes. You can then customize it, or take out views and controllers and create your own, but at least you have a good starting point.

I'm not saying it's the best. I'm just saying it's really easy and quick to get a project going fast.

:)

Mark

[Fritz Meissner]

Something that I don't think has been explicitly said:

Container restarts for every change the way the traditional Java frameworks require is a productivity KILLER. Strongly suggest finding a framework that does classloader magic while you're developing (Play, Roo) or just using a different language (I assume Grails has this waxed?). 

Fritz

[Ian Strong]

Hi S

I had a look at Wicket and GWT, which are very similar in approach. 

I spent more time on GWT, and wasn't impressed with the complexity, even though I'm a seasoned Java developer. 

Have a look at JSF.

Web development is more complex than most people realize, and it's crucial to invest your time in a good framework that is standardized.

See http://my faces.apache.org

We are currently using Oracle's ADF, which, with a bit of effort, produces amazing results.

ADF is JSF with bells and whistles added. 

Hope this helps.

Ian

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[adhirra...@gmail.com]

The only problem I have had with some of these java frameworks (e.g.: Spring) is that when creating new mvc apps using the roo console some maven dependencies just break the entire project. I've found working with JSP or something like PrimeFaces for JSF a much better experience.

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From: Fritz Meissner <fritz.m...@gmail.com>

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Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 11:44:32 +0200

[Mark van Wyk]

Is JSF any better these days. Last time I fiddled with it 2 years ago, it was really horrid.

[Chris]

JSP's have been deprecated in favor of JSF with EE6. Although I have not worked with JSF, JEE6 is really nice compared to previous versions. (EJB, CDI, JPA2 etc). So in answer to your question, I don't know if JSF have improved, but everything else is much, much improved. Even to the point where I favoured to build a recent project in EE6, EJB and JBoss rather than Spring and Tomcat. (amazingly it required much less configuration than the Spring counterpart).

I also had major headaches upgrading a recent Spring Roo project to Java 7, with regards to maven and dependency versions. I do think Spring MVC is pretty cool and easy though, and the problems with maven/roo was limited to AspectJ versions.

[adhirra...@gmail.com]

Well depends on what exactly you want to achieve. For straight forward workflow based applications you can perhaps rely entirely on the mvc approach.

For RIA apps, I would say that JSF has a lot to offer. Have a look what PrimeFaces can do. www.primefaces.org. I haven't seen any richer JSF framework.

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From: Mark van Wyk <ma...@foxbomb.com>

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Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 11:56:58 +0200

[Seb]

Hi Fritz,

one comment on your comment on container restarts - there is generic solution - JRebel. Not free of charge, though...

Regards,
Sebastian

[Mark van Wyk]

JRebel has a free social edition. It tweets to your twitter account once a month and you have to be online for it to work.

https://social.jrebel.com/

Although JRebel is really cool and has worked really well for me, it can be a nightmare to set up and does have its problems. I found using the framework's out-of-the-box support for autoreloading (Play, Grails, etc) much better.

My 2 cents worth.

[Mike]

On 02/08/2012 21:46, NS du Toit wrote:

> I'm looking to improve my methods in this area. What is the best way to
> go about this? Currently I still use scriplets (Java code directly
> within the JSP).....

Modern JSP. (No scriptlets.)

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[Fritz Meissner]

The roo console wasn't what excited me so much as the idea that I could make changes to my code and hit refresh in the browser. It didn't work that well but that was 2010 so hopefully even better by now. Still it doesn't suprise me that some of the best options break each other.

I wonder if  the much-vaunted multiplicity of options that Java offers for every level of the stack has become a disadvantage: many more possible points of failure and added startup time while you try and configure them all to work together. Tools to deploy tools and XML to configure XML and we end up spending more time on infrastructure than on code :/.

Fritz

[Fritz Meissner]

Hi Ian,

You mention 'standardised' frameworks... are you talking about something that operates within the JEE specs? 

What would you say the benefits are of using such a framework, do they balance out slowing down to match the pace at which these specs get updated (to my mind a significant disadvantage)?

Regards,

Fritz

[adhirra...@gmail.com]

Haha that's true. There's more configuration then convention if you had to build your own web stack with java. But I guess with such power comes much responsibility. I personally feel that these java frameworks are trying to out do frameworks like RoR. I'm pretty new to Java EE development and initially it seemed that java was a bit over engineered. When you realise what java EE is really capable off, you tend to realise why all that configuration is needed.

But even if you look at ASP.NET. That dreaded web.config file would cause nightmares when deploying applications, especially web services.

Moral of the story is that it's important to learn what you are doing, not just do it using an easy framework. In the event you rapidly build a project with one of these frameworks and you suddenly encounter an dependency issue or an issue with some internal configuration that that framework, how do you go about debugging if you don't have the knowledge of how that framework works?

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From: Fritz Meissner <fritz.m...@gmail.com>

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Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 13:36:58 +0200

[Dion Dodgen]

EE6, container restarts.

+1 to standards

JSF 2.0:
JSF 2.0 with Prime Faces is cool but still has a way to go, nice components, ajax built in etc. You need to keep a grip on the scopes of the beans backing the UI. Understanding CDI contexts helps here.   

Prime Faces has its own EL resolver and forces you to their conventions.

Container restarts and DEV time killers:
JRebel is good and tightly integrates with your IDE. All nice and good.

A free option, a little hacky but works for 90% of cases:
Use Intellij CE (free as well), setup debugging with the containers VM, when you modify method logic, use the compile option on the context menu and this will hot swap the class. It does not work for class modifications only method logic changes. JRebel does handle this though.

Now to modify your UI, open the xhtml which is running on the server edit and refresh. Done.

I find that waiting for the ORM to validate the schema when building up a persistence context the biggest wait on server redeployments.

JBoss 7 starts up in no time at all really, then lazily loads modules as required.

[Andrew van der Westhuizen]

Sorry for the late reply to this topic, but I found that instead of JRebel, Jetty works kinda nicely for restarts whilst developing. It auto-restarts on changes picked up on a poll.

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[Mike]

On 04/08/2012 10:12, Dion Dodgen wrote:

> Use Intellij CE (free as well), setup debugging with the containers VM,
> when you modify method logic, use the compile option on the context menu
> and this will hot swap the class. It does not work for class
> modifications only method logic changes. JRebel does handle this though.

Netbeans does this very well, too. Enable "Deploy on save" in NB (which
is the default anyway) and I don't really see much advantage in JRebel ;-)

[Mark van Wyk]

Hi Mike,

If you have Hibernate, Spring, Log4J, etc in a project, and you use "deploy on save", how long does the re-deployment take for example?

Are you using Maven with it?

I'd be interested!

Thanks,

Mark

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[Mike]

On 06/08/2012 13:10, Mark van Wyk wrote:

> If you have Hibernate, Spring, Log4J, etc in a project, and you use
> "deploy on save", how long does the re-deployment take for example?

Don't know, since I don't generally use Deploy On Save myself :) - was
just pointing out that NB handles this case with equal ease.

I'm currently on a medium-scale JBoss/Spring project and redeployment is
a non-issue (aside from JBoss crashing the VM on redeployment about 1 in
5 times) - Gradle is the bottleneck. I can't see why/how Hibernate and
Log4J would make much difference to deployment time...

> Are you using Maven with it?

All gods forbid!

Actually, my usual setup is to deploy once and rely (as far as possible)
on hot-fixes, that way you're not redeploying, just hot-swapping the
recompiled classes via the debugger. Of course there are those class
changes where it won't work, but for much of the time it's fine.

BTW, I wans't trying to troll on the JRebel comment - just a bit
mystified as to where it might really have some advantage... couldn't
see it, myself.

[Mark van Wyk]

Hi Mike,

Yeah, I found auto-restarting on deploy can take up to 22 seconds depending on how nasty your spring/hibernate configuration is. Even worse if maven is involved, checking dependencies, running unit tests, etc.

Debugging and hot-swapping classes is exactly what JRebel does, so IDE on debug mode is similar to JRebel in that way. Refreshed in an instant.

Jetty for some reason, just restarts your app in an instant. Perhaps it keep state as opposed to a hard application restart.

In my personal opinion, JRebel won't be along for long. All the web servers, debugging tools, and frameworks are seemingly moving towards the "hot-swap on save". JRebel is a temporary hack that works really well... for now...

:)

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[Moandji Ezana]

On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Mike <mikr...@gmail.com> wrote:

I can't see why/how Hibernate and
Log4J would make much difference to deployment time...

I don't know about Log4J, but Hibernate (like Spring) scans all the mappings at startup and that can get quite slow as your application grows.

For completeness sake, Eclipse can also hot-swap changes within methods that do not affect signatures or class hierarchies. If you're working with Tomcat, you'll want to set reloadable=false in the server.xml, otherwise Tomcat is restarted on every change, despite hot-swapping.

Moandji