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This a noob alike question, but here we go.
I´ve read about Twitter Bootstrap (among other presentation frameworks), which gives the designer/programmer the tools to build easily the front end of a webapp.
What I don´t know is how to integrate that with a, for example, Java EE backend. I mean, do those presentation frameworks allow to integrate them with any backend technology (such as Java, PHP, Python, etc)? or are they linked to a specific technology?
I've built a few Java EE web applications using GWT for the presentation layer and Java in the server side; but as I´ve pointed before, I still don´t catch how it would be integrate Bootstrap with Java for example.
I know it´s a very general question but I´d appreciate any help.
Twitter Bootstrap is a frontend toolkit, so it's basically css and HTML. That means it's not tied to any specific backend technology.
From the blog post announcing it:
At its core, Bootstrap is just CSS, but it's built with Less, a
flexible pre-processor that offers much more power and flexibility
than regular CSS. With Less, we gain a range of features like nested
declarations, variables, mixins, operations, and color functions.
Additionally, since Bootstrap is purely CSS when compiled via Less, we
gain two important benefits:
First, Bootstrap remains very easy to implement; just drop it in your
code and go. Compiling Less can be accomplished via Javascript, an
unofficial Mac application, or via Node.js (read more about this at
http://lesscss.org).
Second, once complied, Bootstrap contains nothing but CSS, meaning
there are no superfluous images, Flash, or Javascript. All that
remains is simple and powerful CSS for your web development needs.
What that means is that you can use it in any way you want. You can generate the markup server-side and serve it to the client (JSP for instance), you can serve a static fil from the server and add dynamic content via ajax (the backend could be servlets or some higher abstraction like Spring MVC or Jersey), or something in between like server-side generated "base" with some dynamic content/behavior via JavaScript/ajax. Another choice could be to drop the servlet container all together and use something like Play! Framework.
Edit:
I don't think Bootstrap creates the HTML elements for you, it creates the css using Less. You have to write the markup yourself on the server, and use the styles and idioms described in the docs: twitter.github.com/bootstrap/components.html You add dynamic values from java through technologies like JSP or template engines like Velocity, Freemarker, StringTemplate etc. Reading values from users is done by handling HTTP GET/POST actions and reading the attributes. Typically you handle a GET by
Reading the parameters
Select the template/JSP by the url
Interpolate dynamic values calculated by java.
For instance if a user does a GET on ./order.html?orderId=1 you select the order.html template, interpolate values from orderService.getOrder(1). Have a look at the Freemarker examples to understand how a template engine work. You basically pass in a Map<String, Object> and the value associated by a ${key} is rendered in the page before it's sent to the browser.
If you are Java-minded, you may like Tobacco, which I made just for that: http://tobacco.noroutine.me/.
Basically it's maven project template with latest js libs and latest Twitter Bootstrap.
There are some similar things around like this. One which is closest to your needs may be resthub especially their Backbone stack may be of interest.
as ebaxt said, Bootstrap is only a modular front end technology. Your question is about the visual part of a Java EE based application.
It will basically deal with MVC patterns and their implementation/technologies (EJB, Spring MVC).
And then you will finally deal with presentation technologies : writting in .jsp pages, using JSF or Struts or GWT technologies or (of course) BootStrap (like any other js and css code) to get visual results and accessibility. By doing this, you will get an entire well structured app.
Sorry for English mistakes if I have done some, I'm a french guy.
Here's an example.
It shows a simple webpage with bootstrap front-end integrated with java-backend service.
Or in another post it mentions integrate bootstrap with spring.
Related
I've been reading about Jodd(java) framework and it looks interesting to me. But I see that it seems to be jsp/servlet based. Can you develop strictly html/html5 dynamic website without jsps with it?
Absolutely. As you can see, in Jodd Madvoc you have this concept of Result : each (java) action returns it. Results are the one that defines how you are going to render the page. By default, there are JSP results, as this is a standard, right; but nothing stops you to simply have a i.e. Freemarker result or to use any other template engine. People are doing this often. Moreover, Results are made to be configured. See: http://jodd.org/doc/madvoc/results.html
Result does not need only to return HTML content. There is a JsonResult for example, or RawResult that can return a JSON or any string.
If you want REST-ish interface that only results with JSONs, you can do that as well, checkout: http://jodd.org/doc/madvoc/rest.html
Madvoc should be configurable enough to fit your needs. Just don't think of it as a 'solution-in-a-box', but a real framework, that you need to dig just a little, but you will find what you need :)
You can develop strictly html/html5 dynamic Websites without JSPs for sure, there are many ways to do it, but in my personal opinion, I believe that you can use AngularJS for your front-end development (HTML5/CSS3). This framework will allow you to implement all your client side without minor issues. It is based on HTML5, so no JSP files will be required. If you are used to MVC or MVVM, well this framework will allow you to work with any of these two approaches.
Dynamic Web Application? Need to show data from a database or store records? No problem, Angular supports AJAX calls to REST Web Services which you can implement with the programming language you feel more comfortable. If it is Java, then you can go for some REST Web Services using Jersey.
Hope this information is useful for you.
Happy coding.
Context:
I have created a 'desktop' (console-based) Java application in Eclipse. I am using several third-party APIs to help me with the logic of my application. There's currently about 1000 lines of Java code.
I would now like to make this application browser-accessible. All I require is a few buttons and a few tables. The buttons (including a file upload button), upon being clicked, would run my 1000-line java code, and then output the text results into a table or two. I might require a few drop down boxes. All that matters, is that the application is accessed through a typical Web browser.
In another project, I have previously used ASP .NET Web forms (C#) to create a browser-accessible Web application and it was extremely straight forward. I simply dragged and dropped the buttons and tables I required. And coded the logic behind each button, and simply pressed "play" for it be usable through the local Web browser. I could do the CSS styling through VS to make it look pretty if need be.
Questions:
Sorry for my simplistic nature, but what is the "Java version" of ASP .NET C# Web Forms? - that is, drag and drop UI components for a web form that I can simply tack code behind, that can be easily deployed to a browser.
What's the "fastest" route I can take to achieve my goal? I simply wish to deploy my console-based Java application into a browser-accessible stand-alone application. It only needs to run on my local machine.
Notes:
From the reading I have done, it appears that I can use JavaFX for my purpose? - that is, create the UI and code the backend. And apparently, I can simply package the desktop-based JavaFX application to be runnable through the browser.
I apologise for any shortcomings of my question/context; I tried to keep it succinct so I may have generalised a bit. Not in the greatest mindset at the moment...
As for question 1, that would probably be JavaFX. It has the UI builder, and can be deployed to the web as well as to the desktop.
As for the general question, there are dozens of solutions, too many of which to cover here. The most straightforward and common solution would be to write a servlet. You would have to do all the mapping from HTTP URLs and request parameters to the appropriate model objects and then convert the model objects to HTML yourself.
Built on top of that are plenty of tools which can help you with the request mapping (JAX-RS, JAX-WS, Spring MVC, ...), and the conversion from model to HTML (JSP, Apache Velocity, ...), and everything in between.
In addition to Servlets and JavaFX, there are probably also several other options such as GWT and Flex. Figuring out which one is the "fastest" would be a broad and subjective question and so the best I can do is list some options.
I have what I think might be a strange question to ask.
Recently I was playing with some java web frameworks (jsf with primefaces) and I noticed that it's quite good at handling form data or when you play along with the jsf components. I also did a project using grails and again it was useful for form data.
But the moment you want to do something which requires a little deviation; then I found myself doing weird things (examples are tag clouds with large strength values using primefaces and single page webapp forms with grails).
This resulted in some very messy html+javascript code for my grails things(which I blame on my inexperience with javascript). This was done because I was using expression language (grails in this case) to populate some of the javascript. The worst part was that I had a bunch of custom javascript code inline with my server pages (I could of refactored a little out but I think one would still have alot of javascript calls inside a single page).
So now to the question(s) :)
[main question] Are there any resources that demonstrates how to design or at least implement maintainable javascript with server pages (gsp, xhtml, etc) ?
The reason is that I find that there are some neat javascript frameworks, but using them with server pages seems a bit unnatural if one takes into account the expression languages for server side frameworks? Unless it's normal to do this type of thing :) ?
Are there appropriate frameworks for Single page webapps using java?
My current answer is that GWT, Vaadin (based off GWT) and perhaps JavaFX qualify. Maybe ZK, Flex and (Grails/Roo + Flex/GWT) also qualify as well?
Are java web frameworks still useful for presentation layers?
My current answer is that they might be when you are dealing with portal type webapps or Web 1.0 apps for lack of a better word. The other case is that they could be when you use alot of role based security and you want to filter things out based on roles, but even that has counter arguments.
My other answer to this is that it might be better to use a java server to provide your web services and then rely on something else to do the front end?
This might be OP, but for single page apps, it's easier to serve up data from the server via JSON(P)/XML/whatever and then use things like Backbone to process and modify the view(s) accordingly. That way, the server can use REST/SOAP/websockets/whatever, and the browser app becomes a full-fledged app.
I haven't actually done this, so don't quote me, but I imagine that it should make sense.
i'm working on a project which needs to support internationalization.
the solution we thought of is:
create HTML templates with placeholders for language (i.e. home.html).
create an i18n directory with files such as: "language_en_GB.json".
on the build process have them merged together to create an output HTML. the output file will sit on a language based directory (such as "views/en_GB/home.html" or "views/fr_CA/home.html").
so basically this:
<h1>{{i18n_welcome}}</h1>
<h2>{{userName}}</h2>
merged with this:
{
welcome:"Welcome!"
}
will become this during a build proccess:
<h1>Welcome!</h1>
<h1>{{userName}}</h1>
i have a few question and appriciate your input.
is this a good approach for i18n?
do you know of a templating engine that does that i18n process well?
is there a solution for client side "baking". i would like a UI developer to be able to bake localy as well.
There are several frameworks that support i18n out of the box depending on your needs and what you are currently using in your code. As a pure templating engine, you can take a look at Velocity or Freemarker. For a more complete framework, you can look at Spring and Spring example and Struts and Struts2 example.
There are, of course, numerous other options as well. I'm just listing four of the most popular that I've seen people use.
Basically, for any of the frameworks, you create resource bundles for each language (named using the language for the specific bundle. Ex: language_en_GB.properties). So your thought process is pretty much in line. Basically you start with your html file and include your placeholder. In your resource bundle for each language, you specify what the string is supposed to be. After that, the framework does the merging on the fly for you, using the appropriate resource bundle for the language in question.
So you're pretty much on the right track - it all becomes a question of integrating properly with your framework and leveraging it to do the merging instead of doing it during your build pipeline.
You failed to provide the necessary details, so I can't really answer your question. I can only say that what you plan seems to be another wheel re-invention (but not as round as original one).
There are certain i18n best practices. In Java world it usually mean using Resource Bundles (in form of properties files) and some mechanism like JSTL to translate them when the page is being rendered. This is the best approach, as you won't need to re-compile anything to introduce the support for another language.
If you care about providing support for client-side scripts, it is usually done by writing out some array from the web page and accessing it on the client side. I think this is the most common solution. Another would be having some web service to provide you with translations and read it via XHR (i.e. AJAX), but that may be problematic. Anyway, you need to push the translations from the server side to the client side somehow.
And of course you need to read them from resource bundles.
From what you wrote it seems that you want to build some kind of static web page, backed by the application server (thus static web pages compilation). If I guessed correctly, honestly using Java for it is a bit overkill. You'd better go with some CMS software like Joomla, Drupal or jEase.
I'm a .NET web developer who has just been asked to produce a small demo website using NetBeans IDE 5.5. I have no experience with Java up to this point.
I've followed a couple of quick tutorials, one which just uses a JSP file and another which uses a servlet. My concern at this early stage is that it looks difficult to keep my application code away from my markup.
Using JSP files looks quite similar to the old days of classic ASP. On the other hand, servlets look useful but seem to involve a lot of writing out markup to the output stream, which I'm not happy with either.
Is there an equivalent to the ASP .NET code-behind model, or any other strategies for separating out markup and code? Is it possible to keep markup in the JSP and then use the servlet from the JSP?
You can't do something similar with ASP.NET code behind using pure Java EE technologies. You need to use an MVC framework like Spring MVC or Struts. The idea is that you create your controller (Java Class) and a JSP page and configure an action to tie the JSP page with the controller.
It isn't a simple as the ASP.NET as it requires configuration and an external framework.
Netbeans has JSF framework embedded. Have a look at this tutorial.
The thing about Java is that it doesn't really come 'bundled' with stuff in the same way .NET does... you generally go looking for the goods.
This makes starting with web apps in Java daunting because there are so many options. Many of them are built off JSPs, which is a plus.
If you are set on using vanilla JSPs you are not going to have a good time. Otherwise, I would suggest Wicket, Stripes or Spring MVC.
Stripes is probably the simplest of the three (Spring is a little complicated and Wicket is conceptually different from the other two). Having said that Spring MVC is probably the most used of the three..
All Stripes really is is JSPs and ActionBeans. Action beans are Java classes that contain actions, which are methods that perform your actions. Theses ActionBean classes also contain the data for the current page.
This page has more information about Stripes.
Wicket has "proper mark-up/logic separation" (as they put it).
You might want to take a look at Custom Tag Libraries in JSPs
For a simple website I would use Struts and Tiles, and make use of the Tag Libs that they provide to make the JSPs look neat and marked up, and separate the code into Actions in the Controller - an Action is just a block of code the Struts servlet calls after doing its work.
It doesn't take long to get the basics of Struts 2 and Tiles, you can pick it up in a day easily.
And yes, Servlets are quite a simple level to write such systems, and it is easy to end up with HTML generators there, which as you've said, is clearly not right. I think you need to be putting more values on the request and session objects, and then formatting them within the JSP.
The strength here is that you can pick your MVC framework to match the scale of your application, yet still have access to raw servlets should you require them for specific actions (e.g., one thing I did in the past was generating and serving an Excel file from values in the database).
If you want to get something out quickly (I note you're putting together a demo), I would perhaps forgo the Java web frameworks, and simply use the servlet solution, combined with a simple templating solution.
Either Velocity or Freemarker will provide the facility of separating your markup from your code. Velocity is simpler than Freemarker. Freemarker is more powerful than Velocity.
I'm not down on the various frameworks mentioned. It's just that if your timescales are short and you're happy to program to the servlet interface for this requirement, then the above may provide the quickest/dirtiest solution :-)
You can use this and do the same as what you did in .NET! It is a very good MVC framework.