An application is both JS intensive and has a complex business logic +huge data flow that uses backboneJS to structure JavaScript code and there is a necessity for the server side MVC also (Spring in this case).
Is it a good idea to implement server side MVC (spring ) along with client side MVC (backbone) and are there any compatibility issues between them?
In case both can be implemented.How am i going to coordinate the spring views with the backbone view.
How will client side MVC with template engine collaborate with 'View' of Spring.
Though this question has been asked before, I could not find suitable answer for this. Can somebody help me with a detailed answer?
Backbone.js is primarily used for SPA's (Single Page Applications). Your backbone.js segments ('views') are rendered and re-rendered by data, that is fetched or changed. If your application is going to be javascript intensive, backbone is a great minimal framework that will help organize your application. However, backbone is not so simple when your javascript application becomes quite large. You have to have a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of javascript and have a programming decided pattern. Otherwise you application can become quite a mess even with the use of backbone.js.
Anyhow I digress. Think of you client side application (backbone.js driven) completely separate from your server side application (MVC driven). All your client application needs from your server application is the data. That is why backbone.js is built around a REST API. If you are looking to develop a large javascript application, I would look at using MVC 4's Web API for your REST API, and backbone.js to help organize and standardize your client application.
This article describes how to make an application architecture with both server side MVC and JS MVC , respecting the MVC pattern.
http://blog.javascriptmvc.com/?p=68
Related
Lately i've been developing a Spring boot application with Angular 5 frontend and i got a little confused about the architecture of it. I was taught to write repositories, services and controllers in spring and to follow the MVC pattern. I started to write the documentation for the app and im trying to describe the arhitecture. So as i think View is the Angular app, C consists of the controller classes, and i described the third layer as buisniss logic which consists of the entity and service classes. But what is the Model really? Did i manage to follow the MVC pattern? In addition i have a controlleradvice, exception classes and security classes that make the authentication and authorization using jwts, but i guess these classes totally stay out from the MVC.
I've searched for the explanation but didnt seem to find it. Could someone please explain this to me? Thank you!
UPDATE
So basically what i dont understand is how the spring classes + angular meet the requirements of the MVC pattern
For example this is one of the first diagrams on the internet when you search for spring layers but as i see these are different from MVC
enter image description here
As mentioned in the comments, both your backend with Spring boot and your frontend with Angular can be seen as different applications, each following the Model-View-Controller design pattern.
You also posted a screenshot of the three-tier architecture. This type of architecture only tells you about how to structure your code. Typically, the MVC-part of your application is within the presentation layer (in your screenshot it's called the web layer).
So, if you would look at your backend application, you can identify the following parts:
Data tier/Repository layer: Repositories
Business tier/Service layer: Services
Presentation tier/Web layer: Model-View-Controller + Dispatcher
Model: Whatever you expose within your services (could be DTOs)
View: JSON structure/mapping
Controller: Spring controllers
And for your frontend you could identify them as well:
Data tier: HTTP calls
Business tier: Angular services
Presentation tier: Components + Router
Model: Whatever you expose within your services (probably a similar structure as the one you expose in your backend)
View: Templates
Controller: Components
This is a bit oversimplified though, and probably not something everyone will agree with.
I am working on the same project with angular as a frontend and spring boot as a backend, and i am still a little bit confused about it's architecture just like you, but i finally had to adopt the MVC model since i am actually using controllers, defining models and rendering views (the json results).
Obviously your front end uses a CBA (component based architecture and your backend is using an MVC pattern since spring MVC is embedded inside spring boot so it actually uses the same logic.
here's a brief image of how spring boot dispatches between controllers and handles requests, you can consider your dispatcher servlet as the middleware between your front end and your backend (but keep in mind that it is embedded inside the spring boot container)
Angular is an SPA, a single-page-application. It contains everything, Model (changing of business data), View (templates with HTML) and Controller (your click- and other event-handlers in your components).
The Spring backend is an extension of the Model, for performing further data transformation and storing it on a database.
The Model-View-Something (there is also MVVM and derivations) is a pattern that comes from desktop-applications, but it doesn't really fit in the world of SPAs. And the Controller in MVC is often seen as redundant even in desktop-applications (because it just delegates stuff and not taking as big role as View and Model).
Important for you to know when you work with Angular is rather the Component-pattern. It is valid in Angular, in React, Vue and even in Vaadin. A component is chunk of both HTML and script-code manipulating that HTML. And components can nest each other allowing a hierarchical architecture.
I have a design problem at hand. Traditionally I had been developing Spring MVC/Struts/jsf applications with either REST/SOAP service serving the data.
Now we have HTML5 and other javascript frameworks. In this light, do we still need to create Spring MVC applicationS as such (assume that the data is served from a RESTful service)
If I go ahead with pure HTML5, CSS UI (with Ajax calls to RESTful services), what are the possible issues that I may get into? does this approach have security holes like being prone to cross site scripting?
Is it a good approach to start off with? Would this approach be called a single page app?
You still need to serve your single page app from somewhere, along w images and css files. This could be a Spring MVC servlet, or whatever.
I'd look into Spring Data REST which is a servlet that creates RESTful HATEOAS endpoints for you.
It's probably easier if your SPA and REST service are on the same domain, so you don't have to worry about cross-domain restrictions.
They are still vulnerable to XSS, as is any system unless you take counter-measures. Spring security can help here. Make sure you follow the OWASP guidelines.
Use Hibernate Validator's #SafeHTML annotation to prevent unsafe HTML input into your database. Use Spring Security's <content-type-options/> , <xss-protection/> , and <header name="Content-Security-Policy" value="..."/> settings to help fight XSS.
Spring MVC, Struts, etc. provide two core functions: Routing, and Binding.
Routing is dispatching an HTTP request to the relevant piece of code.
Binding is converting the world of Strings that the HTTP request sends you in to something more useful, such as a generic Java bean with not just Strings, but integers and dates.
Along for the ride are aspects such as validation.
Finally, they provide an environment that's particularly friendly to your view layer.
None of these aspects, per se, are obsolete in a world where all you have is JSON coming up and JSON heading back. You still need routing, but now you may care to route not simply on the request url itself, but on HTTP verb. You still need binding, having the framework marshal the JSON payload into some easier for java to work with is very handy.
But, (and I speak in general terms, not specifics as I don't know Spring or Struts well at all), while the MVC frameworks can fill the role of a backend system for a more JSON oriented and raw HTTP world, the specific REST frameworks do the job better.
There's no mistake that the MVC frameworks were a significant step up over raw Servlets. Raw Servlets are functional, but simply too primitive for real work. But with design decisions made from a world 10 years ago, some parts show their age and get in the way in the new world of more raw HTTP requests.
If you're doing a mixed app, some MVC, and some HTTP/Ajax methods, then it's better to work with your MVC framework than adopt a new one.
If you're doing a pure singe page app, then it's worth your while to adopt a framework that tends to that niche. They'll simply be a better fit.
Mind, also, they can live side by side. You can have both co-habitate in a single WAR if you wish, particularly if you're adding SPA features to a legacy application. It doesn't have to be an either/or situation.
But I wouldn't introduce an entire new infrastructure component simply to handle a couple of ajax calls. In the end, they're just HTTP calls, and the MVC frameworks (in contrast to most component frameworks) do just fine with raw HTTP for the most part.
I wanted some tips regarding the following problem, from the Java experts in this forum:
I am currently working on a web application with lot of SQL transactions based on MVC architecture. Is is possible to have the view completely developed and hosted at the client side, with the controller and model at the server?
The idea is to represent data in a way desired by end users. So, the View is developed (adhering to some defined standards) by the end users itself, where the controller and model remains the same.
I think it is possible with the MVC Spring framework, but don't know how exactly.
Thanks.
Shaun
Is is possible to have the view completely developed and hosted at the client side, with the controller and model at the server?
What do you mean by this? Well, you may build HTML on client with Java Script by sending ajax requests for data to controller, but it's not the way Spring MVC designed for. For that you probably will need something like DWR
I have some knowledge about Flex and Java EE, they are good for web application development. Anyway when I try to write a typical web page that is based on HTML/CSS/Javascript, I think I should take a look at some new program language/framework.
I heard much good news about grails and finally decided to learn it instead of python, ruby, scale… But I still don’t have an overview of the whole structure. Grails is a backend framework like php, jsp, jsf right? So that probably means, it’s a replacement of Java EE in backend, then how about the frontend (need ajax functionality), what are people using with grails?
thanks
Grails is not a replacement, it is an abstraction around the tradition Java EE stack and some extremely popular libraries like Spring and Hibernate, that allows you to go faster by using "convention over configuration".
One component of Grails is GSPs, groovy server pages, which is a front end technology, the V in the MVC (Model View Controller) paradigm. You also have Domain Objects, which are the M (Model), and Controllers, which are the C. Grails also has Services which are best put into the M category (IMHO) of the MVC paradigm. So the Model arrangement in Grails gives you relatively easy persistence (using hibernate under the covers), the Services give you great reusability in your business and transactional logic, and the Controller simply invoke the right logic for a given request, and return the response.
One part of that response is what gets displayed on the screen. In a simple webapp, GSPs fill that role -- the controller tells the browser to render a specific GSP which has data bound to it from the service method that was invoked in the controller. However, it is easy to have the controller return json, so if the endpoint bound to the controller is an ajax request, the client can handle the response itself.
You can use any front end technology you want in a grails app. The default is GSPs, which is an extension of JSPs, which are part of the traditional java stack, but you can use jQuery, Sencha, Sproutcore, Backbone, anything you want. You would have one GSP in that case which bootstraps your javascript code, and the rest would be handled by the client application.
Grails is a web framework and is not just a backend framework. It supports both JSP and GSP ( Groovy Server Pages) for views.
If you plan to use Ajax functionality, you can make use of one of many javascript frameworks available. You can also go ahead with Flex (since you already know it) or use a javascript framework like ExtJs, Dojo, YUI etc...
I am doing some research for some social network project which i am going to start. I used Spring before yet i cant make a decision at the moment since there are way too many options to choose.
I would like to use JSF2.0 components on my views , and as far as i figure out webflow is a nice way of doing it yet it is not a must.
What benefits does webflow give over Spring web mvc ? My first impression about WF is it makes things way too complicated.
Thanks in advance
Webflow is about flows in web application.
Think of a Wizzard with several Pages, then Web Flow helps you to connect this Pages (in a flow), and provides a variable scope to connect variable with this flow.
While Spring MVC is "only" about isolated Pages.