I'm a newbie when it comes to Java for web application stuff, so forgive me if I'm missing something obvious.
I'm building an app that uses the Twitter Streaming API and Jtwitter to listen for various tweets, do some database record-keeping, and send out some tweeted replies. The application has no web component, although there will be a web application (probably .net, maybe grails) for interacting with the recorded data.
Right now my application is in development and runs on Glassfish included Eclipse, but when I deploy it I'm not sure how to approach it. I was thinking of using Tomcat to auto-load the application as a servlet, but since there's really no web component to this end of it I'm not sure this is the best approach.
Any suggestions?
As long as the volume is fairly low, the difference between Tomcat and a Java SE command-line app is basically the Servlet API. If something more advanced than a simple start/stop button is required on the administrative side I'd go for Tomcat with a bundled admin console.
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I have a project made with Eclipse or Netbeans, it's a Java web application, I would like to deploy this application on web, using a free server, It's only a trial for to learn how function, Could you explain how I can do it ?
You need an application server that supports Java. Tomcat, JBoss, Jetty, any one who fits your needs. Then, just upload your war file into webapps folder (for Tomcat) and it will do the work for you.
You can check here some free or trial services that should be enough for learning.
Then, when you kickass deploying web apps, just subscribe some java application server service or, as I do, rent a VPS and install all you need. Give you some more work, but much more flexible. I've been using ovh VPS and for the price, I'm very happy. Good luck ;)
I'm trying to build my own site where initially I will only host my profile and resume but will also build and publish some simple web applications that I can use as coding samples for jobs. The idea is people can see a demo of the apps and then see the code on github.
Can I do all this using only tomcat or should I use another server for this purpose?
I have heard that tomcat should only be used for java web applications but I've tried it locally and it seems to work...
You can totally do it all with tomcat.
Arguably, tomcat is not as efficient as apache or ngnix for serving static assets, 10% less so, and does not scale as well. There's a good article on the subject here:
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-3.2-doc/tomcat-apache-howto.html
This is not not going to be an issue for you with a small site. Go with what gets you up and running the fastest.
If you want, later you can show off your technical prowess by running tomcat behind a web server. You can tell folks at interviews the story.
I'm trying to write a Java service which runs 24/7, scrapes content from the web, and stores it into a database. What is the best framework to use for this given that I'd like to...
1.) Have an application server that I can deploy my code to (and have it run automatically). This application server should sit on a separate box from the machine that my development environment will run on.
2.) Have a development platform (I would prefer something based on eclipse) which allows me to deploy my code directly to the application server (so I don't have to ftp everything over to test).
3.) Utilize a framework like Spring.
In effect, I'd like to know what to choose for my...
1.) application server
2.) development environment (ide) -- if eclipse, what server adapter to use
3.) framework
So far, I've tried using Virgo with SpringSource STS, but was unable to configure the web server adapter for a non-localhost-residing server. I don't want to have to install Virgo on my development box, and I don't want to have to ftp hop my code over to my production server in order to deploy.
Why don't you just use Tomcat or some other web container, but it may be better to split this into two applications.
Have one that goes out and does the scraping, as a standalone application, for this you can pick anything, I would go with Groovy (http://groovy.codehaus.org/), as ease of development and maintenance is important here, and you can use the Groovy plugin for Eclipse.
The other would be the web service and for this I would think Scala (http://www.scala-lang.org/) would be nice, if you have time to learn it, but Grails (a groovy framework) would be beneficial, so you can write a REST or SOAP web service.
By separating them then you can pick the best solution for that particular aspect, since the web server shouldn't be involved in scraping, but the web server will want to read from the database.
These two languages run on the JVM and can use regular java classes/libraries, but there are improvements over plain Java in them.
Turns out there are some maven plugins that will remotely deploy my app for me. The most notable is Cargo. This way, I can keep all of my initial tools/services the same (Virgo, STS, Maven).
I've actually build something similar quite recently. My application could run without a servlet container or an application server. The reason I choose to run my app in a Tomcat servlet engine is so that I can add a REST API to it to easily retrieve server status information, but I digress.
The plain vanilla Eclipse J2EE installation has decent Tomcat support so without knowing more about your tastes and specifics I'd go with that.
To make your application self starting you need to implement the ServletContextListener interface:
public class ServerClass extends HttpServlet implements ServletContextListener {
public void contextInitialized( ServletContextEvent event ) {
// create and start a thread here.
}
public void contextDestroyed( ServletContextEvent event ) {
}
}
Add the following to your web.xml:
<listener>
<listener-class>com.my.ServerClass</listener-class>
</listener>
Which framework you want to use, only you can decide. Your question is to generic to give a decent answer on that. Read up on a few and pick one. Plain old Java will also do just fine and otherwise Scala might be a good substitute choice.
So, to answer your questions:
Tomcat servlet engine
Vanilla J2EE Eclipse version
Plain old Java
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I would like to create a desktop application in Java & web technologies. The main reason for selecting Java is that it is free, open source, and hence our investment would be minimal and we would save lots of investment with respect to licensing costs, etc. Also, the main reason for selecting web technologies is because our current programmers are well versed with web technologies like HTMl, css, Ajax, and we have good experience in creating amazing UI in web technologies.
I will give you some idea about the software that we would like to create. It would be a desktop based software, namely something like an ERP software.
The key requirements are that there should be a great UI and it should be fast and not very resource intensive.
I have heard that implementing a great GUI is possible, but difficult in Java. It can be done but is complex, whereas it is pretty simple to do the same in Visual Studio, Microsoft products.
I have also checked Adobe Air, Nokia QT, etc but they all are pretty expensive for us and we are looking for front-end browser UI and backend embedded server/database using java technologies.
Is it possible to create a desktop software in which the UI is created using the web technologies and there is an embedded server (like jetty or tomcat) and database and the backend programming would be in Java. How does JavaFX fit into this?
So basically, the desktop application would have an embedded browser (mozilla or some java browser which can packaged with the software), but the end user should never realize this.
I look forward to getting feedback about the same. Can you please provide some examples of software created in a similar combination of java + web technologies.
I did study some softwares like PulpTunes & Zimbra which were along similar lines, but they seem to be connecting to internet to display data. Our software would be totally an offline desktop application.
First of all, it is possible. If you are looking for example, check http://wiki.eclipse.org/Hudson-ci/Meet_Hudson.
You can get basic architecture if you dig into their code. It does not use any embedded db.
You are saying your application will always be offline, in that case I suggest you to go for pure desktop application using technologies like Eclipse plugin development.
If you already made up your mind, here are some points that can help you based on my experience with similar application,
Although your application is offline(I assume, your application need not connect to any server for any use case but the user machine can access internet ), you need to deliver changes(for example, change in html or jsp page )/bug fixes transparently to end user. JNLP/Java web start is a good fit for this.
If you are going for JNLP way of installing, you launcher should take care of embedded db installation and ports at the end user machine(this is big problem than it appears).
Also if you are launching server(in my case, Jetty) through JNLP, you will come across Class loading errors due to permission issues. Be prepared to dig through server code. I have done it long time ago and I do not have code now to point exact issues.
Show progress bars during installation process and during your application startup. Your war deployment takes some time and user needs some of knowing that application is startup is in progress. You will end up writing some swing UI.
Launch URL of the application automatically in default browser of the user system, after application startup. You do not need embedded browser.Check http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/Desktop/javase6/desktop_api/.
I used MySql as embedded data base. Check Embedding mysql in java desktop application. It worked for me, I did not come across any problems.
Yes, it is possible. See https://github.com/jreznot/electron-java-app demo. There you will find an easy way to build Electron based application on Java, without compilation to JS, just Java application inside of embedded Jetty instance with Vaadin UI.
You are truly right, java is great if you are developing a project by self.
Server side coding can be done using Spring (For MVC, Database etc...Very rich and ligthweight framework, easy to learn and understand) with hibernate(ORM framework for Database handling, provides dialects for any Database server).
For UI, you can use Spring MVC OR JSF OR GWT OR javaFX. JavaFX provides JNLP download, which runs on java and without browser. check the link for more JavaFX samples. http://javafx.com/samples/
So its on you, what you want to use for UI side. If you prefer web UI (Not javaFX i mean) then you can have many options.
For Ajax, you will have libraries which support easy ajax. like DWR (Easy Ajax, JS to JAVA) and many other JS libraries like yahoo, jQuery etc.. can be used.
hope this helps.
IMHO the whole idea of running a web-server just to create a desktop app with js and ajax and stuff is horrible... I heard about Apple-creator Titanium which is allows to create crossplatform apps using web techniques. There are couple other similar programs as well.
I think you'll end up better buying a good wyswing Swing design tool for java ui which will cost you couple hundred bucks but will save you lots and lots development trouble. It is very hard to believe that laying out a nice desktop app is more complicated than laying out a web page.
I didn't get the embedded jetty/tomcat part. You want the desktop app to run an embedded server that talks to the database? So each desktop app would open a DB connection?
Why not have a Java desktop app that sends HTTP requests to a JavaEE server that connects to the DB and processes the requests? So basically, a Java client (which could be as rich as your developers can make it) replacing a browser. This gives you a lot more scalability, etc.
We have a similar (albeit much more complex) product developed using
- Swing + Apache Commons HttpClient on the desktop. This makes an HTTP POST request with serialized binary data to the server.
- A dispatcher servlet running in a web container that recreates the Java object on the server and executes the request.
I will probably get stoned for this, but I suggest JavaFX for this. We have successfully implemented a JavaFX-application for internal use in a larger company. The advantages are that the software is "controlled" on the server side (thus, nobody will have an "old" version). Installation effort is minimal (Java Web Start fixes this for you, it will even trigger a minimal JRE-installation if none exist) and last but not least, JavaFX can be run in the browser and as a pure desktop application alike without having to change the code.
Adobe FLEX is another contender, but it lacks the "Web Start" bit and is not quite as flexible when it comes to easy migration between browser and desktop.
Anyway, JavaFX is not quite feature complete as FLEX but version 1.3 can be considered battle-ready and you can create neat stuff with the free JavaFX plugins for Adobe Creative Suite (if your app will contain any graphics, that is).
I want to write an application that runs entirely locally on one machine - there is no need for connection to the internet or to any external machines.
I was thinking that it would be a good idea to use a web browser as the platform for this application so that I would not have to mess around with lots of UI stuff - I could just knock together the web pages fairly quickly and take advantage of CSS to get consistent styles throughout the application.
However I want to interact with a MYSQL database on the machine in question. With this in mind I was thinking that I could somehow use Java to process the information that the user inputs from the application and communicate it to the database via JDBC.
I know that I could use an applet to do this but the downside to that is that I would like the user to be able to save files to the local machine - and I have read that applets run in a sandbox which prevents them from gaining any access to the local machine.
I also know that I could use PHP but I would like to take advantage of object oriented design which Java is perfect for.
Does anyone have any thoughts, suggestions or links to tutorials/webpages which could help me to decide how best to go about this.
Any thoughts are very much appreciated..
I know you said you don't want to mess around with GUI stuff in java, but have you looked in to java web start? It does almost exactly what you need; a user clicks a link through a web browser and your application is deployed on their machine, it even checks to make sure the right JVM is used. Because it is a full application and not an applet, your app won't be sandboxed, and you don't have any access restrictions in your program (other than the normal java stuff..), and for example, it would be easy to do what you mentioned and talk to a mySQL DB. The only downside, is what I mentioned earlier, is that you would have to design a UI in java.
Web Start Wikipedia Page
Sun FAQ on Web Start
Grails may be a useful starting point. It'll provide you with a web server solution that's standalone, and it'll look after the JDBC requirements and the CRUD (create-read-update-delete) capability via dynamically generated web pages. It should take minimal effort to put together an app providing your database interfacing via web pages.
(fyi. Grails is the Java equivalent of Rails)
If you feel comfortable with Java EE-based web development, you could probably just bundle your application with Tomcat or Jetty.
If you do not want to run standalone servlet container just for one application, you can also embed Jetty into a runnable Java application (see documentation here).
Either way you can leverage existing Java EE frameworks (Spring JDBC, Hibernate, all those web frameworks) for abstracting away technical complexities, although with embedded Jetty, you'd probably need to write some kind of integration layer for the web application framework of your choice.
I think you should give Restlet, a lightweight rest framework a try. The tutorial shows you how to start a local webserver, and by that deliver a "Hello World" through the browser within minutes (no joke!), and there's plenty of extensions for any kind of need.
In combination with Java Web Start by which you can deploy and start the application to the local host this should be what you need.
as someone suggested already you can use embbeded jetty server on your application and just let your user to start it using somekind of shell script or batch script. You only need to make your layour directory complaint with a Java Web Application and your on it. ie:
MyApplication
app/
WEB-INF/
lib/
classes/
web.xml
start.bat |
start.cmd - depends on your client OS
start.sh |
Then you should only need to take care of launching Jetty in your start.[bat|cmd|sh] with your app as your webaplication context and your done!
Using JDBC doesn't mean that you have to write an applet, you can use JDBC in any kind of application: a desktop application, a web application, EJBs, MDBs, etc.
You want to use a browser and Java on the server side? Then go for it and use Servlets / JSPs. Consider maybe using an presentation framework (Wicket, Struts2, Spring MVC,...), Hibernate for data access and Spring for other facilities and wiring. Grails is a good idea too.
BTW, I'm not a PHP specialist but PHP has object-oriented capabilities (introduced in PHP4 , enhanced in PHP5) so you won't sacrifice everything if you choose PHP.
So it really depends of what you want to do. If you want to write some Java (webapp or desktop app): choose Java. If you want to put quickly a few web pages in place and have an apache server, choose PHP. If you look for really high productivity, go for RoR or Grails.
You can try GWT + Google Gears
GWT is a GUI toolkit similar to Swing for the browser. Google Gears is a browser side database. Your app is completely in Javascript in a single HTML file and cross-browser compatible.
GWT app can make Server calls and Gears can sync up with a Server database. So you need not restrict your app data completely to the local desktop.
If you're interested in some experimentation, like new stuff and would like to reuse the plethora of Java libs (including JDBC) then you might be interested in the lift web framework, which is Scala-based.
If you want to do it as an applet you can. Sign the applet and give it permissions to the local network (to connect to the MYSQL server that way)... that should be possible. Here is a tutorial on it.