I know java well, and have some experience in EclipseLink, Hibernate, JSF, Grails and some other stuff. but now I wanna learn Spring MVC for web apps and maybe for the sites. and should I learn Spring Framework before begin Spring MVC, or not?
In short, yes. Spring MVC borrows a lot of concepts like dependency injection from Spring, so you need to burn these concepts in before learning Spring MVC. For example, just create a simple Java project, create a few beans, understand the concepts of how a container / injection / wiring work, and then move on to implementing them in Spring MVC.
The most obvious benifit is you can integrate Spring with other web frameworks that you might already be familiar with. That way you get the best of both worlds, and don't have to learn Spring MVC until you have to.
This tutorial explains connecting to a database the spring way, and explains basic Spring concepts while at it. You could then follow it up with the Spring MVC tutorial.
Spring has an easy learning curve, (not to master it of course) so I would suggest learning them together on a small-scale test project.
I don't know if the question is pertinent for stackoverflow, but in any case I think learning Spring MVC is the best way to take a first step to learn Spring, in fact many Spring tutorials start with a Spring MVC application.
Related
I started my mvc experience with cakephp and I really enjoy it. So i would like to expand my knowledge with spring mvc. I have been searching online and all i got is confusion. So if possible I would like to know the prerequisite that you must know before using spring mvc.
Start with Spring Boot. There are many tutorials (also from Spring itself) and a good manual. Boot configures most of Spring MVC automatically for you, so that you can start experimenting with a real use case pretty quickly, with minimal config and boilerplate.
For simple websites you can look for Spring Boot + Thymeleaf tutorials, or even Spring + Angular, Vue or React if you like.
As part of a new web application project, I'm planning to learn Spring. I started to read through the Spring framework reference. While I was googling, I came across Spring boot. What I understood is that spring boot helps to build application much faster than spring by reducing configuration. Now I'm little confused whether should I continue learning spring or jump to spring boot. My intention is to understand how spring works as a framework rather than a few features. So please let me know, as a beginner what should I do? First, learn Spring and then spring boot or vice-versa.
Update
Ok, I know it's a while since I asked this question. I kind of have an answer (personal one)
I started with Spring Boot and so far built one Spring Boot REST application. Yes, as others said, Spring Boot, helps you to get started quickly and being new to some language/technology, I would love to see a working module ASAP. So Spring boot helps you with that.
Later depending on your interest, you can start exploring in-depth how Spring boot does that magic.
So, in summary, go with Spring Boot and then deep dive to understand the underlying concept. Again this is my opinion.
Thanks, everyone for your inputs/suggestions.
If you want to develop web applications especially micro-services, I will recommend that you should learn Spring Boot first.
The first reason is that there are many resources and examples on
web, so you can easily find what you need.
The second reason is that Spring Framework (including Spring Boot) is
suitable for PaaS environment especially Pivotal. Therefore you can
rapidly deploy your applications without too much effort.
First of all, learn how Spring applications work.
Spring applications are based on the Object Relation Model. You need to understand the annotations and why we use them. Then you have to learn how Spring MVC works. Up to here, both Spring and Spring Boot are similar. Basically, Spring Boot is made so that a Spring-based application can be made very easily. Spring Boot is very good framework for the Web and other.
After learning the above things, then you can jump easily onto Spring Boot. However, if you jump directly to Spring Boot you will see there are many such things which are not described in the Spring Boot tutorials, since many of them expect that you have some prior knowledge of Spring.
So I'm about to learn Spring MVC. But what I don't understand is why should I use Spring MVC if I can implement the MVC pattern using a single servlet conroller and JSPs? What advantages does Spring MVC provide over simple java MVC pattern?
Actually yes, you can do it. Question is if you should do it. Spring MVC gives you better organization of your code.
Pure MVC Frameworks like Spring MVC are obsolete today. When combined with templating engines like Thymeleaf, it lacks functionality and developers usually reinvent JSF. For single-page apps based on some popular JS frameworks that need REST backend, JAX-RS is way cleaner and better than Spring MVC REST.
So no, today you don't need Spring MVC and can stick with pure Java EE. For simple, toy-like applications where servlets are enough, you don't really need it but it may be better to use it. For anything serious, MVC is outdated and Spring has nothing to offer.
Edit 2017: Spring offers JAX-RS integration. However, it has several pitfalls, for example Spring won't automatically register classes annotated with #Path for you. Details can be found in Dzone Article
The best way to realize that it's better to play with these technologies for yourself, if you want to try spring MVC I recommend you start with spring boot because you can create projects with more agility without configuring xml files
Spring Boot
Some Features
Create stand-alone Spring applications
Embed Tomcat, Jetty or Undertow directly (no need to deploy WAR files)
Provide opinionated 'starter' POMs to simplify your Maven configuration
Automatically configure Spring whenever possible
Provide production-ready features such as metrics, health checks and
externalized configuration
Absolutely no code generation and no requirement for XML configuration
One of the ideas applied in Spring (not invented by Spring) is
Do not reinvent a wheel.
Having a single controller is not a good idea I'd say - breaking separation of concerns principle.
You can learn more about MVC from Spring documentation.
I'm planning to start learning Spring but when I open any spring tutorial, I find many modules like Spring REST, spring MVC etc.
I'm really confused on how to start with spring, from which module to start, how are these modules related to each other, should I go through all the modules??
I tried searching many sites to answer my questions but couldn't find satisfactory ans, so thought of posting here. It would be great if somebody can guide me in this regard.
Spring is a java framework which provides solutions to several problems. So i guess it really depends on what you are planning to learn. The most important to learn first is understanding what Dependency Injection and inversion of control means. When you understand this you will understand why the rest of the frameworks are designed as it is. i suppose learn Spring IoC first since this is basically the core component of Spring Framework. Link: http://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/beans.html
After learning Spring IoC, you can go on learning each specific Spring frameworks which address specific problems. For example:
Are you interested in Web development? --> Spring MVC
Are you interested in storing data to database? --> Spring Data
Are you interested in developing web services / web apis --> Spring REST
http://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/overview.html
Start with Spring Core Module, which is the heart of entire Spring.
Spring Core Module helps in Injecting Dependencies (java objects) into
the Application at Runtime.
Please refer below URL for more details:
http://www.springbyexample.org/examples/core-concepts.html
A good knowledge of design patterns is essential for learning any framework in Java.
These Youtube videos can give you a good understanding of basic Spring.
As explained in the previous answers, start learning with the Spring core. You need to have a sound knowledge of servlets, JSP, Hibernate (ORM's) to understand the advanced topics.
I know this is not a programmatic questions.
I am a n00b to this area coming from Java EE background and could not find the difference between the two online (may be I am not a good surfer)
Could someone please share the info?
Spring is a framework alternative to Java EE with three parts:
Dependency injection
Aspect oriented programming.
Libraries for web MVC, persistence, messaging, etc.
Spring MVC is for web MVC. It's one of the many libraries built into Spring. You can use other alternatives (e.g. Struts, SEAM, etc.) if you wish and still use Spring.
spring is enterprise framework designed to solve all your problems for enterprise applications. At present they call it as Spring IO, which can be found at spring.io website.
However, Spring MVC is a framework part of the whole stack available to solve the enterprise solutions. This is framework for writing web applications.