I'm creating an online music store application (in Java) for signed and unsigned artist for my client.
I'm currently using Struts 1.3.10 (I was recommended Spring but Spring setup is sort of similar to Struts) for my Web application.
My Database is currently a MySQL 5 (or higher) and I'm using a DAO pattern to talk to it. There are limitations to using Struts and DAO's (e.g. Multiple File upload in Struts is not implemented the same way as multiple String parameters, and for DAO's, there lacks a Publish-Subscribe feature).
Is what I'm doing the best way forward or should I go straight Hibernate (or similar) and move out of Struts? What are the performance implications or technical issues that you've experienced with the same setup I have?
The client doesn't care how I do it as long as it is done.
You could also use both Struts and Hibernate. The key point of Hibernate is that you store whole objects, without having to worry about it. The performance of Hibernate is pretty good. It is easy to use for just storing objects and hard to understand when you want advanced things.
If you've got complete free-rein as to what you an write it in, and assuming that you want to use a Java platform, then do take a look at JBoss Seam and/or Grails too. Both can use Hibernate as the persistence engine and have RAD tools to allow quick construction of skeleton CRUD webapps. Seam is an especially rich framework offering all sorts of built-in features like arbitrary event-listeners, Ajax updates, file-uploads, etc. but takes a bit of getting your head around whereas Grails is easier to get started with.
Struts 1.3 is kind of old now (though still a good MVC framework) and the newer frameworks have better support for handling conversations (i.e. workflow across multiple requests) which Struts 1.x & Hibernate can make a little awkward at times, as well as AJAX features that you might want to implement at some point. Spring MVC which you mention is good too, but is a lighter-weight framework that the ones I mentioned before. Grails is now supported out of SpringSource too, so it should "have legs" so to speak.
Related
I have to investigate the possibility of using JBoss and Seam to build user interfaces to data held in a database controlled by an off-the-shelf package. I've been reading through some of the Seam documentation, and various other sources, but I can't seem to clear the confusion I'm currently suffering from.
My problem is that everything I've read so far talks about using JPA/Hibernate to access and persist data directly in a database schema, but the package I'm working with doesn't allow (or actively discourages) direct updates to any schema that it controls. It does however present what looks like a comprehensive data-access API delivered as an EJB. With the basic assumption that it's entirely possible, my question is how would I go about building a Seam app that uses this EJB for all data access? Is it a simple thing or am I heading for a whole heap of pain? Can anyone point me in the direction of reading material that will help me?
Apologies in advance for the newbie nature of this question, but I've been dropped in at the deep end on this and I'm struggling to pick up so much new knowledge. Any help will be very gratefully received.
Many thanks
Steve
Seam is mainly an inversion of control (IoC) container that provides a lot of boilerplate functionality for web development. It has no real hard requirements for you to use JPA/Hibernate. It's just that the most usual scenario for Java web development is a database backend that's mapped by an ORM, of which JPA/Hibernate is probably the de-facto standard.
If your data access layer (DAL) does not exist or is just wrapper around an existing API (web services, REST, etc.), Seam will also handle that scenario very easily and provide you with all its remaining functionality (session management, JSF integration, security, navigation flow management and lots more).
In essence, a simple component (or set of) that exposes the API you mention and handles its state should be enough. Then again, I do not know your requirements, so I can't say that for sure.
A more complex example is the Seam Social module in Seam 3. It uses Twitter, Facebook or other social web APIs to connect to those services and inject them into Seam's contexts', so that your application can leverage their functionality. I don't know if your scenario is so complex that it would require you to build an entire CDI module from scratch (as Seam Social does) but take a look at their documentation. It might give you some ideas on what further investigate.
I'm asking this question because I'm having some difficulty choosing a framework (or selection of technologies) that I can learn and use for developing a web-based UI for a small Java application:
For background information relating to the app I'm developing please read this question:
So, developing the Java application is going ok and now I'm in a position where I would like to develop a web-base UI for it.
The application and database (MySQL) currently run on a Debian Linux box, as such I've decided that it would sense to use Tomcat to run the Web App. The Web App is to serve the following purposes:
1. Manage the execution of the App by CRUDing data from the MYSQL database.
2. Display status information about the app (i.e. what orders it's placed, what orders are pending, etc.)
3. Produce on demand reports on stuff like the running profit and loss, historic and realtime prices and pricing analytics
So far so good now here's the problem:
There are a bewildering number of choices for how to develop the UI, to name a few I've looked at:
JSPs + Spring MVC
JSPs + Sping WebFlow
JSPs + JSF + Facelets
Wicket
JSPs + JSTL
etc, etc...
The choices seem endless. Is there's a clear industry standard for developing web based UIs using Java related technologies? If so what is it? Ideally I would like to learn a framework which I can use in the majority of real world jobs (and preferably one which can be used from Eclipse).
Thanks and Kind Regards
Personaly, I prefer another approach,
I would go for Eclipse of course, Spring (or other IOC container), Hibernate / JPA + JAX-RS or JAX-WS for the server layer, but not nessecarily JSF / JSP for UI.
For presentation layer, I would rather go with Flex, GWT, or a JQuery in an SOUI approach. (the service layer returns incremental updates in the form of XML or JSON, I swore not to mention the term AJAX)
Your service layer would serialize partial object graphs by demand from the presentation layer, which will act as a disconected client (work on an "offline" dataset , and update dirty on demand)
But that is just my wet dream, and in my current project I'm stuck with Spring MVC, and JSP + JSTL
I would give Jboss SEAM a test drive, just because Gavin King is behind it, but I think its JSF based.
I don't know why I don't see JSF as a SOFEA / SOUI approach, as JSF and AJAX go together well, but for some reason, JSF didn't win my enthusiasm as much as the above suggestions (Flex as a favorite)
See my related question: Web architecture: MVC, Lazy initialization, Data transfer Objects, Open Session In View, is there a consensus approach?
Is there's a clear industry standard for developing web based UIs using Java related technologies?
Well, Sun's Java EE standard is Java Server Faces (JSF) but the version 1.x of JSF is IMHO a kind of failure. This explains why they are so many alternative out there. But NO, there is no clear winner.
Ideally I would like to learn a framework which I can use in the majority of real world jobs (and preferably one which can be used from Eclipse).
Actually, Matt Raible has done very famous presentations on presentation frameworks that you'll find in Comparing JVM Web Frameworks Presentation (the latest version goes beyond Java frameworks only). Really, have a look at both of them, this is very, very good material (with real life metrics).
Personally, I'm a JSF 1.x skeptic so I would not go in this direction (there isn't lots of demand for JSF in my country anyway) but rather choose an alternative. I think that Struts 2, Spring MVC, Stripes (this one is my preferred one), Wicket (this one is getting more and more attention) are all decent choices, they'll all get the job done, the 2 first one being I believe more asked on the job market (but not the smartest). For the final choice, I'd follow Matt's advice: Eliminate, Don't Include. If the popularity on the jobs market is an important criteria, then I guess Stripes and Wicket will get eliminated. If configuration verbosity is a concern, Stripes wins. If you're looking for a kind of Swing experience, Wicket is your friend.
Now, I need to mention that the freshly released JSF 2 and CDI (JSR 299) should be a big improvement (according to the people who worked on it). As I said, I'm a JSF skeptic and I need to take a second look (because Gavin says so). But I still didn't so I can't say anything for now and I won't make any bet on the adoption and future market demand of this new version. But it's worth noting that JSF 2 with CDI should be a really new and different experience.
What are the primary reasons for using the Java EE (EJBs) over just a simple Servlet implementation?
I am working on developing a new project that will primarily be a web service that must be very fast and scalable.
Sorry for any confusion, Although I am experienced in Java, I am very new to the Java Web world, and may not be asking this question well.
Servlets are HTTP request listeners; they can't respond to anything else.
If you embed a great deal of logic in servlets it won't be available to any other clients.
Write your app in POJOs. Get it thoroughly tested without an app server involved. Then worry about how you'd like to package and deploy it. Servlet? EJB? Web service? Something else? No problem - those are just packaging and deployment issues. Get the behavior that you want working properly in POJOs first.
Spring can give you a lot of options here. I'd recommend it.
EJB's specification 1.x and 2.x added complexity that for most webapps was not needed.
Due this complexities the new frameworks appeared to simplify the development and the runtime architecture ( Hibernate / Spring / other microcontainers / others ORM frameworks ) .
EJB's 3.x matches this changes ( through JDO and JPA ) and now, using Servlets with these enhanced frameworks or Java EE with EJB 3 + would give you basically the same results.
Using a Java EE Application Server would add you a number of administrative advantages ( GUI to manage pools, logs, monitoring, transactions etc. ) With out them you may have the same result but you would have to do it all by hand ( editing configuration files that is ) Which may not seem too problematic, but if you plan to have an administrator for your webapp It would be better to use the admin tools that come out of the box with this servers.
Is the web service stateless? If so, I don't see any real advantage in using a full blown Java EE server over something lightweight like Tomcat or Jetty. You can deploy a jax-ws implementation with either of those, and do what you need pretty easily. If there's some kind of state involved, and you end up wanting to share that across multiple machines, that is where having Java EE can come in handy.
With that said, I don't think Java EE would decrease performance any at all. The app servers generally take longer to boot, and take more effort to manage, but once they are up and running the performance should be similar.
If your web services are likely to need any degree of "enterprise" features such as per-method security or transactions use EJBs.
With EJB 3 this is not actually very hard at all, a couple of annotations and you're done.
Otherwise simple POJOs behind a servlet are enough.
I am embarking on a new RIA project with Java on the backend. I'm the only developer, and the app is a line-of-business application. My current stack looks like this:
MySQL || Spring(JdbcTemplate for data access) || BlazeDS (remoting) || Flex(Cairngorm)
My question is: what changes can I make to improve productivity? Manually coding SQL, server-side entity objects, client-side value objects and all the Cairngorm stuff is obviously a drag, but I'm not sure what higher-level frameworks to introduce.
What Flex/Java stack has served you well?
Manually coding SQL
Hibernate is an option to cut this out.
One thing that may be of interest is Grails with the available Flex Plugin. It's built on Spring, Hibernate and BlazeDS, so it's all there for you. It was unbelieveably easy to get it remoting stored objects and responding to AMF calls. I was using this and then moved over to a RESTful E4X implementation as I found it a lot easier to debug and tweak as I could inspect the server output in a browser and have tighter control over exactly what I returned to my Flex app (lazy loading problems in collections using BlazeDS were a headache at times).
Here is a quick tutorial showing how easy the whole Grails + Flex Plugin stack is: BlazeDS in Grails
I would seriously reconsider using Cairngorm. In my opinion it's a pretty bloated framework that introduces a lot of abstraction you'll never use. Check out:
http://code.google.com/p/swizframework
http://www.spicefactory.org
Both introduce the concept of dependency-injection into your Flex app.
Also +1 for Hibernate. I would use the standard JPA annotations on a Java class and extend that with Hibernate Annotations as you find you need additional functionality.
Check out springsource.org's new Spring BlazeDS Integration Project
Spring BlazeDS Integration is a new
addition to the Spring portfolio, and
a component of the complete Spring Web
stack. This project's purpose is to
make it easier to build Spring-powered
Rich Internet Applications using Adobe
Flex as the front-end client. It aims
to achieve this purpose by providing
first-class support for using the open
source Adobe BlazeDS project and its
powerful remoting and messaging
facilities in combination with the
familiar Spring programming model.
As alternative to hand-coding sql, aside from hibernate, you might wanna consider JPA/Toplink. And since you are already from a Spring camp, check out Spring ActionScript (formerly known as Prana), it's an IOC framework for Flex. It solves many inherent problems in Cairngorm. Also a good IDE that supports Flex/Actionscript like IntelliJ IDEA 8.
Whats missing between Flex and BlazeDS is, it doesnt have any sort of landing page where you have a listing of all the available services by just typing a url on the browser (similar to webservice endpoint).
You can try GraniteDS. It's an alternative to BlazeDS, with an actionScript generator, Spring integration (an Spring security), and if you use an JPA implementation, help you with the Lazy Initialization (in a transparent way).
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I'm looking to start developing for the web using Java - I have some basic Java knowledge, so that's not a problem, but I'm at a loss when it comes to deciphering the various technologies for use in web applications.
What options are available to me? How do they work? Are there any frameworks similar to Django/Ruby on Rails which I could use to simplify things?
Any links which could help with understanding what's available would be much appreciated.
Java frameworks come in two basic flavors. One is called the "Action" Framework, the other the "Component" Framework.
Action frameworks specialize on mapping HTTP requests to Java code (actions), and binding HTTP Requests to Java objects. Servlets is the most basic of the Action Frameworks, and is the basic upon all of the others are built.
Struts is the most popular Action framework, but I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone. Struts 2 and Stripes are more modern, and very similar to each other. Both are light on the configuration and easy to use out of the box, providing very good binding functionality.
Component Frameworks focus on the UI and tend to promote a more event driven architecture based on high level UI components (buttons, list boxes, etc.). The frameworks tend to hide that actual HTTP request from the coder under several layers. They make developing the more advanced UIs much easier. .NET is a component framework for Windows. On Java, the popular component frameworks are JSF (a standard) and Wicket.
As a rule, if you're creating a "web site". that is something more akin to presenting information (like a blog, or a community site), the Action frameworks work better. These sites tend to be simpler, get bookmarked often, require "pretty URLs" etc. This is generally easier to do with an Action framework.
Component frameworks are much better for things like back office applications with lots of UI elements and complicated workflows. You'll find, particularly with tooling, that these style of apps will go together faster using a component framework. But component frameworks have more complicated request workflow, sometimes relying on hidden state, lots of POST actions, etc. Many have "horrible" URLs, and sometimes create pages that are difficult to bookmark.
Both frameworks can be used for both tasks, just some are more suited to the task than others.
None of these frameworks directly address persistence, but many have extension modules or idioms that work tightly with JPA/EJB3 or Hibernate.
Your basic java web technology is servlets. Servlets let you write Java code that responds to various HTTP events (doGet, doPost, doPut, etc). They're generally used for controllers in the MVC architecture.
Link: http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/
JSP lets you write HTML with embedded Java instead of the other way around (in servlets). JSP has been extended via JSF to incorporate more recent architectural advances. This is in the same line as PHP and ASP. This is the view portion of the MVC architecture.
Link: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/GUI/JavaServerFaces/
A lot of more complex applications utilize Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) for session management, clustering, etc. This isn't a web technology, per se, but you see it go hand-in-hand when dealing with more complex webapps. Alternatives include frameworks such as Spring.
EJB: http://docs.jboss.org/ejb3/app-server/tutorial/
Spring: http://www.springframework.org/
Also, you'll want to familiarize yourself with ORM technology (after servlets and JSP/JSF). The leading ORM framework is currently Hibernate. This lets you map SQL tables to java objects and interact with them accordingly. This is more advanced stuff so save it for when you're trying to get your head around EJB/Spring, etc.
Link: http://www.hibernate.org/
edit: I forgot to define ORM. It stands for Object Relational Mapping/Mapper (whatever version of "Map" you feel like using :)
Start with JSP backed by logic in Java classes. Or use servlets.
The advantage of using JSP and Servlets is that you gain knowledge of what all the frameworks do under the hood. And that understanding is crucial to figure out how to do X in that particular framework.
Furthermore, JSP is very easy. You can easily see what you're doing and very easily see it when you mess up the view with business logic.
And quite a lot of frameworks (Struts, Spring MVC) use JSP as their view technology. It's a natural first step in web development using Java.
I don't know if there's anything quite as nice as Django for Java, but Spring has a light-weight web framework built on J2EE
http://www.springframework.org/about
A flexible MVC web application
framework, built on core Spring
functionality. This framework is
highly configurable via strategy
interfaces, and accommodates multiple
view technologies like JSP, Velocity,
Tiles, iText, and POI. Note that a
Spring middle tier can easily be
combined with a web tier based on any
other web MVC framework, like Struts,
WebWork, or Tapestry.
something like grails ?
there is also the projects from spring
You'll need to start with servlets and JSP. There are many web frameworks in Java and all of them are based on these two technologies.
You could try Jboss Seam : http://www.seamframework.org/Documentation/GettingStarted
If you are using Eclipe as your IDE there is good integration via Jboss Tools or you can use the Seam-Gen tool that comes with Seam. This allows you to define a database table (or tables) and with a few easy commands, build an entire runnable web project from it. It's a nice way to get the ball rolling.
Also Java Server Faces
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Server_Faces
This is a very open-ended question. The short answer is "yes" there are frameworks, libraries and standards to do everything from writing things at the HTTP request level up to content management systems in Java.
You can also use other languages (e.g. Python, Ruby, etc) on the JVM for that matter.
For some of the Java-only technologies, investigate JSP/Servlets, Struts, Struts2 (which is the updated version of Webwork), Spring MVC, Tapestry, web4j, Wicket.
There are other frameworks built on the JVM but use languages other than Java such as Grails.
To get started I would download Eclipse (latest version) and Tomcat. Create a new web application in Eclipse. There are guides that can get you started.
Start with learning how JSPs and Servlets work, these are a bit low level and aren't really a framework, but will let you get up and running quickly. From there investigate and choose your framework.
Spring MVC is pretty easy to get set up and going. I'm certain there are others.
If you already know Ruby On Rails, you can use it with JRuby and deploy to a Java server (like Tomcat) with Warbler.
In pure Java, Wicket has a good approach and is getting quite popular.
Before studying those frameworks, why not study first where it all started? Try programming with servlets first, so you could a peek at the core of most of those java web frameworks. It would help you understand J2EE better.
J2EE is the standard. You can use this to build apps with Java Server Pages, Servlets and EJBs.
Struts is also a very popular framework that uses JSPs and Servlets. Its a bit tricky to get setup but it is a very good option for mid size sites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struts
In general Java is more component-based, i.e. you don't have frameworks that do it all for you (you'll probably have to pick a database access framework yourself, for example). For Data Access I'd recommend Hibernate or iBATIS.
For the front-end there are literally hundreds of frameworks around. Investigate JSF, Wicket, Struts 2, Stripes - whichever one you use depends on your specific needs as they all have different strengths.
And for a business layer I'd recommend the Spring Framework, which is very comprehensive and has a great reference guide / tutorial :)
I learned Java in college back when it was in version 1.1.5. I recently started trying to program for the web, but it didn't make sense until I read Head First Servlets and JSP. There are way more things involved in web development with Java than I ever realized, and without this book, I would have quit and just used PHP.